Liquid Crystals Laptops And Life

Life, Laptops and Liquid Crystals connects the science of one of the icons of the digital age, the laptop computer, with life itself via liquid crystals, the phase of matter essential to both. The book begins with a review of basic chemistry and physics, then goes on to discuss semiconductors, polymers, liquid crystals, and the molecules of life. Applications of these basic concepts to electronic devices, liquid crystal displays, art, and of course the laptop computer, complete the text. Physics, chemistry, materials science, electronics, and biology are all essential to understanding those topics. The necessary concepts in each field are developed with an eye to emphasizing molecules and molecular interactions. Each chapter concludes with review exercise, as well as references and research questions that encourage the reader to explore the topics in more depth.

The self-contained properties of discotic liquid crystals (DLCs) render them powerful functional materials for many semiconducting device applications and models for energy and charge migration in self-organized dynamic functional soft materials. The past three decades have seen tremendous interest in this area, fueled primarily by the possibility

The first book to explore the potential of tunable functionalities in organic and hybrid nanostructured materials in a unified manner. The highly experienced editor and a team of leading experts review the promising and enabling aspects of this exciting materials class, covering the design, synthesis and/or fabrication, properties and applications. The broad topical scope includes organic polymers, liquid crystals, gels, stimuli-responsive surfaces, hybrid membranes, metallic, semiconducting and carbon nanomaterials, thermoelectric materials, metal-organic frameworks, luminescent and photochromic materials, and chiral and self-healing materials. For materials scientists, nanotechnologists as well as organic, inorganic, solid state and polymer chemists.

This book presents the unique mechanical, electrical, and optical properties of nanomaterials, which play an important role in the recent advances of energy-related applications. Different nanomaterials have been employed in energy saving, generation, harvest, conversion, storage, and transport processes very effectively and efficiently. Recent progress in the preparation, characterization and usage of 1D, 2D nanomaterials and hybrid architectures for energy-related applications and relevant technologies and devices, such as solar cells, thermoelectronics, piezoelectronics, solar water splitting, hydrogen production/storage, fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors is covered. Moreover, the book also highlights novel approaches in nanomaterials design and synthesis and evaluating materials sustainability issues. Contributions from active and leading experts regarding important aspects like the synthesis, assembly, and properties of nanomaterials for energy-related applications are compiled into a reference book. As evident from the diverse topics, the book will be very valuable to researchers working in the intersection of physics, chemistry, biology, materials science and engineering. It may set the standard and stimulates future developments in this rapidly emerging fertile frontier of nanomaterials for energy.

This book presents the theory of soft matter to students at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level. It provides a basic introduction to theoretical physics as applied to soft matter, explaining the concepts of symmetry, broken symmetry, and order parameters; phases and phase transitions; mean-field theory; and the mathematics of variational calculus and tensors. It is written in an informal, conversational style, which is accessible to students from a diverse range of backgrounds. The book begins with a simple “toy model” to demonstrate the physical significance of free energy. It then introduces two standard theories of phase transitions—the Ising model for ferromagnetism and van der Waals theory of gases and liquids—and uses them to illustrate principles of statistical mechanics. From those examples, it moves on to discuss order, disorder, and broken symmetry in many states of matter, and to explain the theoretical methods that are used to model the phenomena. It concludes with a chapter on liquid crystals, which brings together all of these physical and mathematical concepts. The book is accompanied online by a set of “interactive figures”—some allow readers to change parameters and see what happens to a graph, some allow readers to rotate a plot or other graphics in 3D, and some do both. These interactive figures help students to develop their intuition for the physical meaning of equations. This book will prepare advanced undergraduate or early graduate students to go into more advanced theoretical studies. It will also equip students going into experimental soft matter science to be fully conversant with the theoretical aspects and have effective collaborations with theorists.

Symmetry exists in realms from crystals to patterns, in external shapes of living or non-living objects, as well as in the fundamental particles and the physical laws that govern them. In fact, the search for this symmetry is the driving force for the discovery of many fundamental particles and the formulation of many physical laws. While one can not imagine a world which is absolutely symmetrical nor can one a world which is absolutely asymmetrical. These two aspects of nature are intermingled with each other inseparably. This is the basis of the existence of aperiodicity manifested in the liquid crystals and also quasi-crystals also discussed in “Crystallography and the World of Symmetry”.

The past decade has seen significant advances in naphthalenediimide and rylene diimide chemistry. This book discusses the recent advances in this field, and highlights potential and real applications for the molecules. Such applications include organic photovoltaics, anion-slides, DNA binders, and building blocks for complex molecular topologies. Naphthalenediimide and its Congeners is the first book in this rapidly developing area, and will be essential reference material for postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students. This text will also provide a solid foundation for further development of naphthalenediimide chemistry. Written by leaders in the field, the book includes chapters on the supramolecular chemistry of naphthalenediimide; DNA intercalators; ion transport through membranes; naphthalenediimide based photovoltaics; and rylene dyes, amongst others. Naphthalenediimide and its Congeners is a detailed and in depth resource relevant not only to supramolecular and materials chemists, but also to the larger chemistry and materials science fields.

An integrated approach to the molecular theory of reaction mechanism in heterogeneous catalysis, largely based on the knowledge among the growing theoretical catalysis community over the past half century, and covering all major catalytic systems. The authors develop a general conceptual framework, including in-depth comparisons with enzyme catalysis, biomineralisation, organometallic and coordination chemistry. A chapter dedicated to molecular electrocatalysis addresses the molecular description of reactions at the liquid-solid interphase, while studies range from a quantum-chemical treatment of individual molecular states to dynamic Monte-Carlo simulations, including the full flexibility of the many-particle systems. Complexity in catalysis is explained in chapters on self-organization and self-assembly of catalysts, and other sections are devoted to evolutionary, combinatorial techniques as well as artificial chemistry.