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Book Review
Bicontinuous Liquid Crystals
The recent excitement, promise, and activity in nanoscience has spawned interest in nanoscale patterning, partitioning, and control. We in the liquid crystal community have been organizing matter at the nanoscale for over 100 years. Thus it is especially useful at this juncture to bring together experts in three dimensional patterning to write a concise and comprehensive overview of the state of the art in our field.
The editors have chosen to focus on encapsulation as the application of interest and have provided the necessary background chapters to familiarize the reader with the terminology of triply-periodic-minimal surfaces (TPMS) and methods of characterization, followed by a tasty menu of applications ranging from drug-delivery to induced protein crystallization, all of which rely on phases that have an inside and an outside, i.e. bicontinuous phases. The chapter by Corkery provides an introduction to the subject of minimal surfaces, which is just right. Though the connection between minimal surfaces and complex analysis is a beautiful, classic result in mathematics, it is not necessary in order to be comfortable with the zoology of these structures.
The author has exercised unusual taste and restraint to produce a highly useful and pedagogical review. The chapter by S man and Lindman on NMR characterization provides a clear guide to a useful alternative to traditional scattering experiments, the latter complicated by the nearly ubiquitous cubic symmetry of TPMS found in nature. Indeed, NMR provides information about the dynamics of surfactants which can, in turn, be used to extract information about the structure of the interconnected networks.
These chapters are just examples of the breadth and depth of this collection. I believe that the comprehensive tables and graphs in the chapter by Chung, Jeong, and Kwon, will be of great use to groups interested in drug delivery and carrier toxicity and is likely to be the base from which further work will grow. Other chapters cover scattering, the existence of TPMS in biological systems, mathematical techniques, and multiple chapters on applications. Edited volumes, though necessary, often become outdated quickly. Fortunately, this volume has enough foundational information and background to remain useful for some time while the choice of applications makes it timely.
Date: March 2006
Edited by Matthew L. Lynch and Patrick T. Spicer
Review by Randall D. Kamien
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