Towards -Radiation-Sensitive Quasi-Biological Display

摘要

Liquid crystals are anisottopic fluids that are characterized by some degree of order. These features are the basis of their response to weak, external perturbations and, hence, of their use in many display systems. In water DNA and Homoguanylic oligonucleotides give rise to columnar, cholesteric liquid crystals; in the latter the columns are formed by an extensive self-assembly process. The cholesteric pitch can be directly measured with an optical microscope from the spacing between the retardationlines that appear in the fingerprint texture. The distance between two lines is half the pitch. It is therefore easy to evaluate the effect of perturbations such as temperature change and added ions or dyes on the cholesteric structure by directly observing the variation in this distance.