MLC

Abstract

Multicomponent thermotropic liquid crystal mixtures are widely used in the display industry to obtain desired material properties. Usually, the behavior of such mixtures differs little from that of pure materials. In other systems, such as lyotropic, chromonic, colloidal and elastomeric liquid crystals, the behavior can be dramatically different. Standard mean field theories assume a single component, and do not provide an adequate description for such systems. I will discuss strategies to incorporate both attractive and repulsive interactions of multicomponent systems into mean field models, and present some results.