| Budget Amount *help |
¥74,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥74,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2010: ¥14,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥14,400,000)
Fiscal Year 2009: ¥15,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥15,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2008: ¥15,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥15,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥15,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥15,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥14,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥14,400,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Liquid crystals (LCs) composed of rod-like small molecules are known to possess an optical anisotropy, the direction of which is generally controlled by electric and magnetic fields. Although the electro-optical properties of LCs are well studied and widely used, the relation between the motion of constituent molecules and the macroscopic dynamics has not been understood yet. In this study, we found that a small rotational bias of each chiral LC molecule induced by a collision of gas molecules gives rise to the coherent collective uni-directional rotation of the entire LC director and that the rotational efficiency depends on the chemical structures of both LC and gas molecules, which linearly increases with the momentum of the colliding gas molecules. The result indicates the one-to-one relation between the microscopic and macroscopic LC motions.
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