Phantasmagoric liquid crystals

抄録

We have investigate the new types of the phase transition among LC phases originated from the shape transformation of micelles near extremely dilute lyotropic nematic　(3~9wt%) in water solution of cationic and anionic surfactant mixture. For thermotropic nematic, orientation order is only broken by order-disorder transition keeping the anisotropy of the “building blocks” which is equivalent to the rod like one molecule. This type of transition shows the first order nature. On the contrary, even the shape and size of building blocks can be changed dependent on temperature, concentration or other thermodynamic quantities in LN. It is easy to understand the shape change of building blocks strongly coupled with phase stabilities among LC phases. We have found the new types of I-Nc(rod)-Nd(disk) continuous phase transitions driven by the shape (sphere-rod-disk) change of the micelles.