Investigation of liquid crystalline compounds and their mixtures with mesogens, non-mesogens and nanoparticles by high-resolution adiabatic scanning calorimetry

Calorimetric techniques and in particular slow scanning adiabatic techniques have contributed substantially to our present understanding of phase transition in many soft matter systems.  There are however many kinds of phase transition several soft matter systems that are not or poorly understood.  In this project we use adiabatic scanning calorimetry to arrive at high-resolution data for phase transitions in the following systems.  In this project we study the temperature dependence of the heat capacity in the two-phase region near the liquid-gas critical point of pure fluids and near the consolute point in binaryliquid mixtures.  This allows to address some basic questionsof fluid asymmetry and complete scaling.  In thermotropic liquid crystals we study uninaxial-to-biaxial nematic phase transitions, transitions in bend-core and lyotropic liquid crystals in an effort to determine the order of the transitions and their universality class. 

Keywords:binary mixtures, adiabatic scanning calorimetry, phase transitions, liquid crystals, soft matter, uniaxial and biaxial nematics

Disciplines:Condensed matter physics and nanophysics

Project type:PhD project