276
Views
13
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Invited Articles

Lehmann effect in chiral liquid crystals and Langmuir monolayers: an experimental survey

&
Pages 1071-1084 | Received 22 Nov 2008, Accepted 19 Jan 2009, Published online: 29 Jun 2009
 

Abstract

In 1900 Otto Lehmann observed that the internal texture of cholesteric droplets, when submitted to a thermal gradient, was constantly rotating. This phenomenon was explained phenomenologically in 1968 from symmetry arguments by F.M. Leslie in the framework of the nematodynamics. Six years later, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes noted in a premonitory way, in his seminal book The Physics of Liquid Crystals, that the heat current responsible for the Lehmann effect could also be an electric or a diffusion current, suggesting the existence of an electric or chemical Lehmann effect. This led to numerous experiments, sometimes wrongly interpreted, and to the recent discovery of the chemical Lehmann effect in Langmuir monolayer and ferroelectric smectic films. These experiments are reviewed and discussed in this paper.

Notes

Present address: Laboratoire des Polymères et Matériaux Avancés Centre de Recherche et de Technologie de Lyon–Rhodia, 85 rue des frères Perret, BP 62, 69192 St-FONS, France.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.