Optical and Electric Properties of Polypeptide Liquid Crystal

Abstract

PBLG liquid crystalline solution was confined to a sandwich cell and applied a D. C. electric field parallel to the cell surface. The appearance of regular stripes perpendicular to the D. C. field was observed after inverting the field direction by a polarizing microscope. In order to pursue the mechanism reversing the molecular director, the measurement of optical transmittance under crossed polarizers was carried out through the rotatory process to a perfect reversal of the director. The apparent activation energy of rotational viscosity was obtained from the temperature dependence of the inversion rate.