Thermal Properties of Binary Mixtures of Liquid Crystals

Binary mixtures of liquid crystals have been studied for a variety of reasons. For many applications a mixture will extend the mesophase temperature region particularly to cover ambient temperatures. Mixtures are sometimes used to investigate the existence of liquid crystalline phases for monotropic substances which cannot be supercooled sufficiently to allow for direct observation.15,22 A great many studies have used mixtures to determine miscibility of the two liquid crystals and the morphology of the resulting textures.1–12 Recently mixtures have been shown to be important as solvents for nuclear magnetic resonance studies and as stationary phases for gas chromatography separations.27,18