Chapter 14: Polymer Dissolved Liquid Crystals

Although most common, polymer modification of liquid crystals does not necessarily need to imply the formation of oriented networks from reactive monomers. Existing polymers can be simply dissolved within a liquid crystal. This affects largely the physical properties of the liquid crystal, and in particular its viscosity, and therefore also its response times. For ferroelectric liquid crystals the spontaneous polarization and the tilt angle are also affected. For frustrated phases the phase diagrams are largely changed. In this chapter an overview is provided of the different effects of polymer-liquid crystal mixtures on rheology, electro-optics and thermodynamics.