The Physics of Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

Mixtures of surfactant or amphiphilic molecules and solvents are known to display a large number of lyotropic mesophases. Although the physics of thermotropic liquid crystals has been vastly discussed in the literature, lyotropic mesophases have been much less explored. This book gives a unifying presentation of the structural and physical properties of lyotropic liquid crystalline systems, including a set of experimental results and a discussion of the characterization of different structures and the corresponding phase transitions. The initial chapters contain a description of the main experimental results and techniques associated with the characterization of lyotropic mixtures, and an overview of some theoretical approaches to account for the phase transitions and phase diagrams of these mesophases. This book includes discussions on periodically organized lyotropic systems, micellar and bicontinuous structures, modulated and cholesteric structures, and a number of related developments (magnetic colloids, microemulsions, films, and lyo-banana mesophases).