9871475 Cladis The purpose of this award is to provide partial support to a Special Symposium of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Fine Particle Society to be held in Dallas, TX, April 1-3, 1998. The invited scientists have recently been credited with several breakthroughs in advancing our fundamental knowledge of, therefore awareness of potential applications for, liquid crystalline polymers and elastomers. At the Special Symposium, they willl share their knowledge and perspectives of these highly novel materials, first successfully synthesized and studied in Europe, with US scientists particularly interested in their biomedical applications. %%% Liquid Crystalline polymers come in two groups, those where the liquid crystalline elements are linked on a linear chain and those where they hang as side groups from polymer chains. The first are known as main-chain liquid crystalline polymers and the second as side-chain liquid crystalline polymers. While there is US based expertise on main chain liquid crystalline polymers, there is far less for side-chain liquid crystalline polymers and elastomers. Awareness of the range of applications for side- chain liquid crystalline polymers and elastomers was recently dramatically broadened by theoretical studies showing they could have novel applications as artificial muscles. Because know-how has been developed in Europe to prepare liquid single crystalline elastomers and polymers, such important theoretical conclusions can be supported by experiments and materials characterizations. As a result, applications, particularly in the biomedical domain, based on these novel materials is ripe for further development in biomedical engineering. ***
