Liquid Crystallinity in Polymers : Principles and Fundamental Properties

'Liquid Crystallinity in Polymers' focuses on the wealth of scientific ideas and approaches which has accompanied the rapid growth of this field over the past two decades. The author highlights the molecular basis for liquid crystallinity in polymers, including lyotropic, thermotropic, mainchain, sidechain systems and mixtures.
An entire section is devoted to conformational aspects of polymeric mesogens. A section describing current molecular theories follows. Another section on experimental behavior analyzes the performance of these theories, pointing out areas where further investigation is needed.
A final section deals with elastic and viscous properties, with defects and textures and with rheology of LCP.