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Different Liquid Crystals
Shown are space filling models of MBBA and the cyanobiphenyls 5CB, 5OCB, 8CB and 8OCB. You can use the mouse to rotate single molecules.
Note that - due to the aromatic rings - the molecules are rather stiff and elongated. Thus we expected a model continuum of ellipsoidal rigid bodies, representing the single molecules, to yield a reasonable description of the liquid crystal. This assumption, in fact, holds true as long the molecules are "uniaxial", i.e. as long as there is a symmetry axis of revolution (well, more or less). However, if the molecule itself becomes biaxial, more complicated models are needed. A famous example is Chandrasekhar's biaxial liquid crystal ( S. Chandrasekhar et al.,J. Phys. Vol.30, No.5, May 1988, pp. L491-L494).