Columns
The pinnacle in Chandrasekhar’s scientific career came in 1977, when he and his co-workers discovered the columnar phase of liquid crystals made of disc-shaped molecules, rather than the well-studied rods. Through supramolecular assembly, the discs exhibit a mesophase which has a two-dimensional, periodic order. The paper announcing the discovery of this state of matter was published in the Indian physics journal Pramana, and is one of the most highly cited papers in the field of liquid crystals. Subsequently, a few thousand compounds with disc-like molecules were synthesized. The columnar liquid crystals are noted for their highly anisotropic conducting properties, which is exploited in device applications.
The subject has had yet another resurgence in 1996, when Japanese scientists discovered new types of liquid crystalline phases exhibited by compounds made of another new type of (banana-shaped) molecule having bent-cores. Many such compounds exhibit columnar liquid crystalline phases.
Read more about this topic: Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar
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