New Trends in Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

Dear colleagues,

The liquid crystalline state of matter has been investigated for more than 100 years by many researchers from different branches of science, technology, and even the arts. Materials presenting liquid crystal properties are present in our daily lives (e.g., cell phones, watches, thermometers, and displays). The great majority of these materials belong to the family of thermotropic liquid crystals. Liquid crystalline properties are also present in mixtures of amphiphilic molecules and solvents, or shape-anisotropic colloids in solvents, which constitute the family of lyotropic liquid crystals. These have attracted a great deal of interest in recent years, despite the fact that technological applications of these materials are not widespread. Some outstanding aspects make lyotropics very attractive for research: The richness of their phase diagrams, showing structures not present in thermotropics; Their closeness with biological systems (e.g., the cell membrane structure); The kosmotropic and chaotropic (bonding/order inducing and disrupting) characteristic of the chemical groups present in some molecules forming lyotropics give interesting information about the water arrangement (solvation water) at the solute/solvent interface; and the possibility of exploiting their self-organization in nanotechnology, as templates. Recently, new mixtures have been proposed, enlarging the possibility of new structures and exciting new properties. It is expected that in the near future, research in lyotropics will increasingly impact biology and medicine—in particular in the field of drug delivery with low toxicity, membrane permeation, and elasticity.

We invite colleagues to submit papers exploring the different aspects of the physico-chemical properties of lyotropic liquid crystals.

The potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• New lyotropic mixtures
• Property characterization (structure, linear and nonlinear optics, etc.)
• Chromonic lyotropic liquid crystals
• Chemical stability of lyotropic mixtures
• Inorganic and colloidal lyotropic liquid crystals
• Defects in lyotropic mesophases
• Elasticity in lyotropic structures
• Biaxial and uniaxial nematic phases
• Applications of lyotropics
• Interface with biological and biomedical research
• Lyotropic inorganic liquid crystals
• Lyotropic phases from colloidal nanoparticles

Prof. Dr. Antonio Martins Figueiredo Neto
Dr. Ingo Dierking
Guest Editors

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