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Liquid Crystals S. Chandrasekhar (Cambridge University Press, 1993, 450 pages). ISBN: 0-521-417-473 (hardback); 0-521-427-41X (paperback)
Since the first edition of Chandrasekhar's book was published in 1977, liquid crystal devices have become ubiquitous and their use has increased to today's multibillion-dollar world market. Applications range from simple watch and calculator displays to large-area public display boards, and from pocket televisions to video recorders. Besides these technological advances, research on the physics and chemistry of liquid crystal materials has burgeoned, and the diversity of chemically stable materials has greatly increased the knowledge of the liquid crystal phase. Variations in the phases have been elucidated; for example, the discotic phases have been characterized, and new types of smectic phases have been discovered. Understanding of these materials has progressed but continues to be the subject of research in many laboratories worldwide. Therefore, this revised and updated edition of an already popular book is very welcome. The book concentrates on the physics of thermotropic liquid crystal materials, a highly interdisciplinary field of research. Although readers are not exposed to the considerable research on the synthesis of these fascinating organic chemicals, chemical structures are presented where necessary. In addition, there is some mention of devices in which liquid crystals are used, but not a full description of liquid crystal applications since these are developing rapidly and detailed reference to them can quickly become dated. The book is comprehensive and self-contained in describing the physical properties of liquid crystals. Extensive references are included with each chapter, providing an invaluable source for researchers in the field, as well as an introduction for newcomers to liquid crystal research and for students wishing to read more on the subject. A minor criticism is that the contents page is rather difficult to read, making it hard to find a particular subject. The most significant updates to the book were made on the previous version's final chapter on smectic liquid crystals, which has been substantially revised and now includes an additional chapter on discotic liquid crystals. The first chapters have been updated where necessary; for example, improvements in experiments using x-ray scattering now provide deeper understanding. The sec68
ond and third chapters describe the statistical theories of the nematic phase and the extremely successful continuum theory of the nematic state. Newly included in the third chapter is a description of additional elastic constants, which may help to describe their importance in the flexoelectric effect and surface anchoring to alignment layers. The fourth chapter on cholesteric liquid crystals has been extended slightly, with a short section on the blue phases. The revised chapters also include brief descriptions of the twisted nematic (TN) and supertwisted nematic (STN) displays. The fifth and substantially revis
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