2010 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Spatio-temporal transformations of molecular motion in two-dimensional liquid crystals
| Project Area | Creation of non-equilibrium soft matter physics: Structure and dynamics of mesoscopic systems |
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| Project/Area Number |
18068017
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Review Section |
Science and Engineering
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
TABE Yuka Waseda University, 理工学術院, 教授 (50357480)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
YONEYA Makoyo (独)産業技術総合研究所, ナノシステム研究部門, グループリーダー (30443237)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2006 – 2010
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| Keywords | 二次元液晶 / 非平衡構造 / キラリティ / 分子モーター |
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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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