Analysis and structure control of liquid crystal phases having sub-micrometer periodic structures

液晶是介于液体和晶体之间的中间状态。向列相液晶是由棒状分子组成的各向异性流体，是液晶相的一种，广泛应用于电视和计算机显示器。还有许多其他液晶相，其中一些具有几百纳米周期性的自组织周期性结构。这些相具有与非晶相不同的光电性质，并且期望使用这些相的新型液晶显示器。在本研究中，我们分析了一些纳米结构液晶相的详细结构和出现机制。 研究了液晶分子与表面的相互作用，这对液晶取向结构的控制起着重要作用。在此基础上，我们通过将这些相限制在微空间内，对它们进行结构控制。

Liquid crystals are intermediate states between liquid and crystals. Nematic liquid crystal, one of liquid crystal phases, is an anisotropic fluid composed of rod-like molecules and is widely used in television and computer displays. There are many other liquid crystal phases and some of them have self-organized periodic structures of a few hundred nanometer periodicity. These phases have different opt-electric properties compared with the nematic phase and new types of liquid crystal displays using these phases are expected. In this study, we analyzed the detailed structures and emergence mechanisms of some nano-structured liquid crystalline phases. And we studied the interaction between liquid crystalline molecules and surfaces, which plays an important role on the control of the orientation structure of liquid crystals. Upon them, we made structure control of these phases by means of confinement of them inside micro-spaces.