Soft Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter theory in the TCM Group is primarily concerned with liquid crystalline elastomers - their fundamental physics and their applications.

Professor Mark Warner
Theory within the TCM Critical Mass Grant, and a personal Senior Research Fellowship (EPSRC).

Prof. Eugene Terentjev
Theory within the TCM Portfolio Award and also experimental investigations of liquid crystalline elastomers and related systems (Biological and Soft Solids Sector).

Dr. John Biggins
Theory of Condensed Matter Group and Fellow of Trinity Hall.

Dr. Daniel Corbett
Theory of Condensed Matter Group; Preceptor at Corpus Christi College

Milos Knezevic
Theory of Condensed Matter Group; Trinity College

The new phenomena that arise in Liquid Crystal Elastomers include:

Shape changes by factors of 4 or more on heating/cooling (or light and dark in the case of photo-elastomers) - see the movie from EM Terentjev.
Deformation without energy cost for so-called soft elasticity.
Development of stripe microstructure to facilitate soft deformation. The elastic energy is "quasi-convexified" as in the case of shape memory alloys.
Lasing in chiral elastomers, and colour change on mechanical deformation - both of these effects are consequences of cholesteric elastomers acting as soft photonic band solids.
Chiral separation of racemic mixtures (equal number of left and right handed molecules) when exposed to chiral elastomers.
Piezo-electricity, ferro-electricity and Poisson ratios of 0 and 1 in smectic elastomers.
Development of Gaussian curvature in flat sheets under temperature or illumination change when the director field has topological charge.

A brief sketch is given of the physics that brings these phenomena about.
See also the website directed to these materials and see the book referred to below.

Book on liquid crystal elastomers.

Mark Warner and Eugene Terentjev have written a book on liquid crystal elastomers (now in a second, paperback edition) published by OUP and also available at Amazon.

The first chapter (entitled "A Bird's-eye View") of the book surveys its whole scope. This chapter and the contents and preface pages are available in pdf format. See also the book's web pages

The Agilent EuroPhysics Prize of the European Physical Society was awarded in 2003 for this work.



© Theory of Condensed Matter group Information provided by www @ tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk Privacy policy