Liquid crystals (LC) are well known as smart material that changes its properties under the influence of external influence. Usually they used to visualize the distribution of not uniform thermal, electrical, magnetic, acoustic fields or for chemical and radiation detection. In this paper a new unique application of LC for surface tension mapping of solid surfaces is described. The director's orientation of LC molecules thin layer applied on the surface under investigation depends on the correlation between surface tension of LC and solid surface. The presence of local structural defects on the surface causes the alteration of local value of its surface tension that may be visualized by corresponding change of LC layer local reorientation. On this basis a new nondestructive method to study structural inhomogeneities of different materials surfaces has been developed. A new application area of the method for investigation smart materials for MEMs is illustrated by experiments with piezoquartz resonator sample, silicon defective surfaces and twins in Iceland spar crystals. The efficiency of LC technique application in high technology testing was the reason to use its valuable possibilities in medicine. The recent results of LC method application to cancer detecting are also discussed.
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