Liquid Crystalline Polymers

Athene Donald became Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge in 1998 after many years as a lecturer and then reader. She was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. She is the author of over 200 papers in the general field of soft matter physics, with interests spanning from synthetic to biologically relevant polymers. Alan Windle is Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author of over 200 papers on polymer structure, liquid crystal polymers and carbon nanotubes. Professor Windle holds the Bessemer and Royal Society of Arts silver medal from Imperial College and was awarded the Rosenheim Medal by the Institute of Metals in 1988 and the Swinburne Gold Medal and prize by the Plastics and Rubber Institute in 1992. Simon Hanna is Lecturer in Polymer Physics at the University of Bristol. His research interests include computer simulations of structure/property relationships in polymers, liquid crystals and liquid crystal polymers, and interfacial interactions between polymers and liquid crystals.

1. Liquid crystalline polymers: a brief history; 2. Terminology and concepts; 3. Stability of liquid crystalline polymers; 4. Theories of liquid crystallinity in polymers; 5. Local order and classification; 6. Distortions and defects; 7. Biological liquid crystalline polymers; 8. Flow and applied fields; 9. Processing and applications of structural liquid crystalline polymers; 10. Applications of functional liquid crystal polymers.