キュービック液晶相についての熱力学的研究に基づき，サーモトロピック液晶とリオトロピック液晶が従来考えられていたよりも近い関係にあることを指摘した。ある種の液晶においては分子末端の長鎖アルキル基は大きな配座エントロピーを持ち，分子内溶媒・自己溶媒として働くことが熱力学的な実験により確認できる。サーモトロピック液晶を擬二成分系として取り扱うと，キュービック液晶の構造モデルが導かれ，三重周期極小曲面（TPMS）と平坦面のエントロピー差などを議論することができる。
Through thermodynamic analyses and considerations on the existing experimental results on cubic mesophases, the unexpected sharing of the common properties by thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystals is demonstrated. In some thermotropic liquid crystals, the terminal alkyl chain attached to the molecular core is highly disordered as indicated by the magnitude of configurational entropy. The melt chain serves as intramolecular solvent (self-solvent), as evidenced by the close similarity between phase diagrams against chain-length and composition in binary system with n-alkane. These facts lead to the quasi-binary (QB) picture of thermotropic liquid crystals. The QB picture affords the basis to establish the structural models of cubic mesophases in classic cubic mesogens, and that to deduce the entropy difference between flat surfaces and complex surface(s) having complicated geometry such as Gyroid, a triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS).
