NMR studies of macroscopic and microscopic properties of liquid crystals

The work presented is concerned with studies of orientational order in liquid crystals and the behaviour of certain mesophases. The experimental technique used in common with all the work is deuterium NMR spectroscopy. Much of the work involves studies of the orientational order of deuteriated solute molecules dissolved in liquid crystal solvents.Chapter 1 gives an introduction to liquid crystals followed by a quantitative description of orientational order. Deuterium NMR in liquid crystals is described and an outline of the molecular field theory behind the orientational order of a rigid, biaxial solute in an uniaxial mesophase is given. In Chapter 2 a novel type of mesophase induction is studied using NMR, where a solute induces up to two extra phases in a discotic mesogen depending on its concentration. The purpose of this work is to try to gain an understanding into the mechanism of the phase induction involved. Chapter 3 is concerned primarily with the macroscopic behaviour of the nematic phase formed by a semi-rigid main-chain polymer in solution. Of particular interest is the study of the reorientation of the monodomain, once the director has been rotated with respect to the magnetic field of the NMR spectrometer. A mesogen which has been claimed to exhibit a biaxial nematic phase is studied in Chapter 4, in order to determine the symmetry of the phase using NMR. Finally, Chapter 5 deals with the differing behaviour of a liquid crystal monomer and its dimer dissolved in common nematic solvents in order to determine whether this agrees with molecular field theory.