Search results for "Liquid Crystals"
showing 4 items of 74 documents
“SmartGlass” Obstacles for Dynamic Inducing of Light Scattering in Vision Research Experiments
2017
We describe a technique that allows control of visual stimuli quality through the use of a setup with a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film positioned in the optical pathway of one or both human eyes. Nowadays, PDLC films allow alteration of the resolution and contrast limits of the transmitted light due to continuous change in the light scattering that is obtained by the application of an AC electrical field. In our experimental setup, the use of a wide-aperture up to area of 20 x 15 cm2 PDLC sheet is combined with a flat-screen PC display or with a modified display emission block without its interference filter unit and with an installed individually controllable colored light-em…
Blends of Semiflexible Polymers: Interplay of Nematic Order and Phase Separation
2021
Mixtures of semiflexible polymers with a mismatch in either their persistence lengths or their contour lengths are studied by Density Functional Theory and Molecular Dynamics simulation. Considering lyotropic solutions under good solvent conditions, the mole fraction and pressure is systematically varied for several cases of bending stiffness κ (the normalized persistence length) and chain length N. For binary mixtures with different chain length (i.e., NA=16, NB=32 or 64) but the same stiffness, isotropic-nematic phase coexistence is studied. For mixtures with the same chain length (N=32) and large stiffness disparity (κB/κA=4.9 to 8), both isotropic-nematic and nematic-nematic unmixing oc…
Ionic self assembly in the design of fluorinated ionic liquid crystals (ILCs)
2011
Ionic liquid crystals are a class of compounds containing anions and cations, that combine the properties of liquid crystals and ionic liquids[1]. In the conventional design of ionic liquid crystalline compounds, an ionic core is connected with mesogenic groups via chemical covalent bonding . Alternatively, in ionic compounds, strong electrostatic interactions between cation and anion can be used to build up liquid crystalline order at supramolecular level. This general approach, called ionic self-assembly (ISA), allows one to create ionic phases and mesophases with highly organized supramolecular order [2]. In this context, a new series of fluorinated ionic liquids (ILs) and ionic liquid c…
Friction and Heat Transfer in Membrane Distillation Channels: An Experimental Study on Conventional and Novel Spacers
2022
The results of an experimental investigation on pressure drop and heat transfer in spacer-filled plane channels, which are representative of Membrane Distillation units, are presented and discussed. Local and mean heat transfer coefficients were obtained by using Thermochromic Liquid Crystals and Digital Image Processing. The performances of a novel spacer geometry, consisting of spheres that are connected by cylindrical rods, and are hereafter named spheres spacers, were compared with those of more conventional woven and overlapped spacers at equal values of the Reynolds number Re (in the range ~150 to ~2500), the pitch-to-channel height ratio, the flow attack angle and the thermal boundar…