Investigation of thermal and optical properties of some mesogenic/nonmesogenic liquid crystal mixtures

Liquid crystals are very interesting materials in technological applications because they show the ordered state of solids and the fluid state of liquids together. Although its discovery dates back a century, its technological and industrial use is new. Today, many liquid crystal mixtures have been synthesized and continue to be synthesized. In this thesis, mixtures of non-mesogenic 4-Aminobenzoic acid (4ABA) and 3-Aminobenzoic (3ABA) acids and mesogenic 4-(Octyloxy)benzoic acid (8OBA) were studied. Different ratios of liquid crystal mixtures were produced and the liquid crystalline properties of the produced liquid crystal mixtures were investigated and characterized. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was used for the thermal analysis of the mixtures. Important properties such as phase transition temperatures and enthalpies have been determined. The microstructural properties of the mixtures were investigated by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). Chemical bond states were determined by FTIR analysis and interpreted. Liquid crystalline phase determination of the mixtures was made with Polarized Optical Microscope (POM) and DSC. According to the results obtained, it was understood that the phase transitions and phase structures in the thermal analyzes of the mixtures showed liquid crystalline properties. The wide nematic field range seen in DSC analysis is a preferred feature especially in liquid crystals used in technological and industrial terms. When the phase transition temperatures of the mixtures are measured depending on the heating rate, the phase transition temperatures increase slightly as the heating rate increases. As the heating rate increased, an increase was also observed in the phase transition intervals. The (O-H) peaks and (C=O) peak shifts observed in the IR spectra indicated that there was a complexation between the substances forming the mixture and this complexation formed a new liquid crystal phase. The presence of H bond observed in IR spectroscopy shows that the synthesized liquid crystals are in monomeric structure. The basal distance (distance between the layers) measured in the XRD analysis is between the basal distance values of the substances that make up the mixtures. X-ray diffraction data show that liquid crystal mixture molecules form monoclinic structures. The sharp and regular peaks observed in the XRD graphs show that the crystal structure of the mixture is regular.