Liquid crystalline polymers

Biomoteriols 16 (1995) 1359 c 1995 Elsevier Science Limited Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0142-9612/95/$10.00

TFRWORTY EINEMANN

BOOK REVIEW Liquid Crystalline Polymers C. Carfagna Elsevier

Science

Limited,

Oxford,

UK, 1994, pp. 257, ISBN 0 080 42149 0, f80.00 polymers have ordered behaviour. These could be useful to study properties such as conformation of biopolymers or membrane organization and structure. This can be achieved by using liquid crystalline polymers that possess similarities, either via the polymer backbone or side chain, to biomolecules or biomaterials. Overall, the book is very specialized and would not appeal to a general audience regardless of whether they are active in biomaterials research or not. I do not recommend this book to those seeking an introduction to overview of liquid crystalline polymers.

This book is a collection of contributions based on a workshop held in Italy in June 1993. The coverage is divided into five sections, each containing several papers. The topics are general synthesis and characterization, thermosets, blends and composites, rheology and transport properties of liquid crystalline polymers. The material presented is inherently topicspecific and therefore restrictive because of its workshop origin. Variation in style and language is unavoidable considering that the authors are from different countries. The book has nothing to do with mainstream biomaterials or its associated fields. The idea of presenting a review of this book was to inform journal users that liquid crystalline polymers may have some Liquid crystalline relevance to their research.

Eugene Khor Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore

1359

Biomaterials

1995,

Vol. 16

No. 17