248 Pages 6 Color & 65 B/W Illustrations
by Jenny Stanford Publishing

248 Pages 6 Color & 65 B/W Illustrations
by Jenny Stanford Publishing

Dendrimers are hyperbranched molecules with well-defined nanometer-scale dimensions. Important technological applications of these systems, both in biomedicine and materials science, have been recently proposed. Liquid crystal dendrimers are fascinating materials that combine the characteristics of dendrimers with the anisotropic physical behaviour and molecular self-organization typical of... Read more

Introduction

Dendrimers

NMR of Liquid Crystals and Liquid Crystal Dendrimers

Liquid Crystals

Liquid Crystals

Mesophases of Thermotropic Liquid Crystals

Molecular Structures of Liquid Crystalline Dendrimers

Side-Chain Liquid Crystal Dendrimers

Main-Chain Liquid Crystalline Dendrimers

Shape Persistent Liquid Crystalline Dendrimers

Supramolecular dendromesogens

Other Liquid Crystalline Dendrimer Structures

Overview

Fundamentals of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Introduction

Nuclear Paramagnetism

Dynamics of Non-interacting Spins, Bloch Equations

The Nuclear Spin Hamiltonian

Dynamics of Interacting Spins

Pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

NMR spectroscopy of anisotropic fluid systems. Theory and Experimental

Introduction

Nuclear Spin Hamiltonian for NMR of Anisotropic Fluid Systems

Averaged Second Rank Tensorial Quantities and Order Parameters

Determination of High Field NMR Absorption Spectra for Selected Spin Systems

Quantum mechanical analysis of selected NMR pulse sequences

Experimental details

NMR relaxation and molecular dynamics. Theory

General concepts

Relaxation rates

Relaxation Mechanisms

NMR relaxometry and molecular dynamics. Experimental techniques

Inversion-recovery

Fast Field-Cycling

Experimental Setups

NMR spectroscopy of liquid crystal dendrimers. Experimental results

NMR of LC dendrimers and the investigation of the biaxial nematic phase

Comparison with tetrapode's monomers and other side-chain LC dendrimers

NMR relaxometry of liquid crystal dendrimers. Experimental results

Liquid crystal dendrimers investigated by NMR relaxometry

The influence of dendrimers structure on the molecular dynamics

Biography

Carlos R. Cruz received his PhD in physics from the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, in 1994. He is a senior lecturer at Instituto Superior Técnico ( IST) and coordinator of the Complex Fluids NMR and Surfaces Group of CeFEMA (Center of Physics and Engineering of Advanced Materials), Technical University of Lisbon. His research work is mainly focused on liquid crystals experimental physics with particular emphasis on NMR and X-ray diffraction studies. In recent years he has been team leader in two European Projects on liquid crystal dendrimers.

João L. Figueirinhas received his PhD in physics from Kent State University, Ohio, USA ,in 1987. He is currently a senior lecturer at IST and a researcher at CeFEMA. His main research interests focus on NMR spectroscopy and electro-optics of anisotropic fluids including liquid crystals, polymer liquid crystals and their composites. He has co-authored more than 70 research articles on those subjects.

Pedro J. Sebastião received his PhD in physics from the Technical University of Lisbon in 1993. He is a senior lecturer of physics at IST and a researcher at CeFEMA. His current research interests include NMR study of molecular dynamics in liquid crystals, ionic liquids and other soft matter systems, the development of new fast field cycling NMR technology and model fitting software.