38th German Topical Meeting on Liquid Crystals

38th German Topical Meeting on Liquid Crystals

In the sunny days of 10–12 March 2010, the 38th German Topical Meeting on Liquid Crystals took place at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. The conference brought together more than 100 people from the various fields of liquid crystal research presenting 27 lectures and around 45 posters on their work.

The German Topical Meeting on Liquid Crystals is the most important meeting of the German liquid crystal community and takes place every year at a different location. After a very successful and smoothly organised meeting in Stuttgart the year before, it was up to Mainz to provide a nice location for this year's conference.

Its programme clearly showed how liquid crystal research extended its spectrum from mainly looking for new materials and electro-optical effects for use in display technology to becoming an interdisciplinary field of research. The concepts and methods developed for assembling and structuring soft matter compounds are used in many segments of nano technology, polymer and materials science, as well as in life sciences.

After the opening speech, the first session on Wednesday concentrated on surfactants and lyotropic liquid crystals. Doris Vollmer spoke about the tuning of surface-induced layer transitions by the addition of alkanes, such as octane, while Christian Bahr showed how nematic prewetting transitions at interfaces could be realised by carefully adjusting the surfactant concentration.

Then it was time for Pawel Piranski to present his very interesting work on the physics of lyotropic films. He reported on a new hygroscopic method allowing one to easily draw and control the water content in lyotropic films, thus enabling the observation of some new phenomenon. Unfortunately, it was his last lecture at the German Topical Meeting on Liquid Crystals, as he will end his active period in liquid crystal research and enjoy his well-deserved retirement. His great didactic abilities and interesting lectures will be missed very much at future conferences.

The following session was dedicated to new aspects in discotic liquid crystal research, focusing on electric properties. The application of columnar phases in molecular conducting wires and solar cells and investigations on charge carrier mobilities and new fluorescent dyes were presented to the interested audience. The end of the afternoon session was then marked by the first celebratory show for the Alfred Saupe Award (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Picture of the first Saupe Award [http://www-e.uni-magdeburg.de].

Figure 2. (a) Ringsdorf and Zentel in 1987. (b) Helmut Ringsdorf, Brigitte Saupe and Rudolf Zentel at the first celebratory show for the Alfred Saupe Award [http://www-e.uni-magdeburg.de].

In commemoration of Professor Alfred Saupe, the Alfred Saupe Foundation and the German Liquid Crystal Society gives the Alfred Saupe Award to outstanding persons from all areas of research and technology involving liquid crystals and mesophases. Under the attendance of Brigitte Saupe, the first award was given to Professor Helmut Ringsdorf for his outstanding work in the area of liquid crystal polymers. In his spectacular laudation he emphasised that ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’ with respect to synergetic effects in successful collaborations, being not only based on interdisciplinary interactions, but also demanding unconventional ways of cooperation among scientists. This should be admitted, maintained and cultivated. He ended his statement with the suggestion to invite Brigitte every time the Alfred Saupe Prize is given, and asked her also to help in giving younger scientists the chance to be awarded. Both got great acclamation from the audience.

The successful opening day of the conference was celebrated in the evening at a sophisticated wine tasting under the guidance of a very original and entertaining vine dresser from a local winery with tasty Pretzels. The beautiful tasting glass was presented as a special gift to all participants. Afterwards, the historic centre of Mainz invited the conference participants to enjoy a good dinner in the company of old friends and colleagues. Some of the younger scientists were seen in the Mexican bar ‘Sausalitos’.

Thursday morning started with some synthetic chemistry lectures on emissive Liquid Crystals, Inositol amphiphiles, and a wonderful lecture from Heino Finkelmann about mechanical deformation of smectic polymer networks. Since he retired shortly after the conference, it probably was Heino's last lecture on these meetings. As a very active and successful researcher at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg he was also involved in the organisation of many of the former German Topical Meetings on Liquid Crystals that started as the ‘Freiburg Liquid Crystal Workshop’ back in 1971. A short coffee break was followed by the next lectures given about recent research on bananas, biaxial nematics and magic angles. The outstanding talk of Jens Seltmann on shape-persistent biaxial nematics was nominated for the young scientist award.

After lunch, participants reassembled in the lecture hall, not to sit and listen but to stand and discuss exciting work and results in front of many posters. It is remarkable how much enthusiasm and plain scientific interest is present during poster sessions in our community. One could get the impression that there is some magic about liquid crystals bringing people together in a special way where hierarchy, vanity and arrogance have no place but interest, kindness and sympathetic criticism is the basis of communication.

After the poster session, the afternoon continued with Dave Walba explaining in his lively didactic style the structure of the mysterious B4 banana phase. The talk induced an exciting discussion about negative curvature in helical structures and was followed by further talks on ferroelectric and bent-core materials. The lecture of Dorothee Nonnenmacher reported on puzzling ferroelectric behaviour in de Vries-like liquid crystals with nanosegragation. It provoked a controversial debate about proper and improper ferroelectricity in liquid crystals. The last two contributions of the day by Carsten Tschierske and Antoni Kocot were focused on the exiting phenomenon of biaxiality in nematic phases of bent-core mesogens.

Afterwards, the conference dinner took place at the Mensa of the University of Mainz with a delicious variety of food and local wines. Eating and drinking, the scientists took their time to discuss the many different inspirational insights the conference so far had provided for each of them. Here the friendly and productive atmosphere of this annual conference could be witnessed by all participants once more.

Friday started with the second poster session. Among many good posters was the one of Martin Kühnast who presented his impressive research on tailor-made molecules for carbon nanotube dispersion in thermotropic liquid crystals. With this outstanding presentation of his work, he won the Young Scientist's Award. The second winner of the Young Scientist's Award was Alexander Lorenz, who gave his talk in the morning session on waveguiding in infiltrated photonic crystal fibres.

Before that, the opening lecture by Peter Palffy-Muhoray presented the first highlight of the day. His lecture on motors based on shape change was a successful combination of playfulness and scientific research, which impressed and amused the audience. An interesting method for determining shear viscosity coefficients in a material-developing environment was introduced by Dagmar Klass. Her talk was followed by Eva Enz reporting on electrospun fibres from liquid crystalline materials.

After another delicious lunch in the crowded foyer, the last session started with Alexey Eremin and his lecture on colloidal liquid crystalline suspensions. Kun-Lin Yang inspired the audience with a new application for liquid crystals in life sciences, using them in microfluidic immunoassays for diagnostic applications. The last talk of the conference was given by Sabine Laschat on recent results in the new field of ionic liquid crystal research.

After the closing remarks by Rudolf Zentel and the presentation of the Young Scientist Award winners, all scientists went home, taking with them many new impressions and ideas for their research projects in the future.

For three wonderful days in Mainz we want to thank the organisers Professor Dr Rudolf Zentel, Professor Dr Harald Pleiner, Marion Koch, Sönke Haseloh and Doris Kirsch.

Dorothee Nonnenmacher, Florian Schoerg,

Nadia Kapernaum and Daniel Krueerke

Institute of Physical Chemistry

University of Stuttgart

Germany