Optical Microscopy Studies of Liquid Crystals

Abstract Liquid crystals, just like ordered crystals, organize themselves in structures that are relatively well defined, but this organization is not perfect and, as a result, they include defects. These defects, when viewed using polarized light microscopy, give rise to optical textures that are characteristic for each of the different liquid‐crystalline mesophases and provide a valuable diagnostic tool for the identification of mesophase type. This chapter focuses on the types of defects that occur and looks at the optical textures arising from the formation of defects in liquid crystal mesophases.