Monografie naukowe (Scientific monographs)

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Insight into phase situation and kinetics of cold- and melt crystallization processes of chiral smectogenic liquid crystals
(Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences, 2023) Drzewicz, Anna
Liquid crystals are made up of molecules with an anisotropic shape, which means they have various properties along different directions. This makes them distinct from isotropic liquids because they tend to align themselves with specific rules and create intermediate phases called mesophases of various long-range degrees of spatial order of molecules. As they are cooled down, these partially ordered phases can either become glassy (vitrify) or form crystals. On the other hand, when liquid crystals are heated from a glassy state, they experience a phenomenon known as cold crystallization. This work discusses the studies of the phase situation and the kinetics of non-isothermal and isothermal cold- and melt crystallization of chiral smectogenic liquid crystals belonging to the 3FmX1PhX2r.s series. Compounds under study exhibit differences in the molecular structure, for instance in the terminal non-chiral (‘m’ = 2-7) and chiral (‘r’ = 4-7, ‘s’ = 1, 2) chain lengths, and the fluorosubstitution of the aromatic molecular core (‘X1’, ‘X2’ = H, F). It is found that individual elements of the molecular structure of 3FmX1PhX2r.s influence to varying degrees the occurrence of liquid crystal phases or the nature of both crystallization and vitrification processes.