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Welcome Najiya!

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Welcome our new PhD candidate Najiya to the ESMP. Najiya will be working on "Physics meet Biology " scheme, specifically on research in liquid crystal elastomers for artificial vasculature for sustaining organoid growth.

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Catherine's Image got selected for FNR Science Image Competition

Catherine's images are being displayed by FNR at Place Auguste Laurent, Limpertsberg. Discover the beautiful science of Luxembourg at the FNR Science Image expo! Place Auguste Laurent, Limpertsberg.





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ESMP in letzscience

Anjali's image got featured for FNR campaign "letzscience", raising awareness of Luxembourg research by blending science images with Augmented Reality (AR). Each image features a story with an example of Luxembourg research connected to the image. Access the full story here: https://letzscience.fnr.lu/liquid-crystals-a-shape-shifting-object-of-study

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Congratulations Camila!

Many congratulations to Camila and Jan for recent article " Interrogating helical nanorod self-assembly with fractionated cellulose nanocrystal suspensions" published in Communications Materials. Article is open access.
 
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Congratulations to Larry!

Congratulations to Larry, Shameek, Manos, and Jan on their recent publication, "Elastic Sheath–Liquid Crystal Core Fibres Achieved by Microfluidic Wet Spinning" published recently in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C!

In this article, they present the wet spinning of core–sheath liquid crystal-filled elastomer fibers using a microfluidic spinneret adapted from the normal techniques they use to produce shells and droplets. In particular, when we spin fibers containing a cholesteric liquid crystal, the result showing brilliant reflected colors as a result of the liquid crystal alignment within the fiber core. These fibers can be highly stretchable and show color changes upon heating and cooling.

You can access the article
here.

JMCC TOC Graphic




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Anjali gets featured on FNR's Spotlight on Young Researchers!

Our Ph.D student Anjali Sharma was featured on FNR's Spotlight on Young Researchers blog! Laugh

Anjali works on forming liquid crystal shells and she works on trying to stabilize them using different surfactants and polymers.

Anjali and the team (Jampani, Nikolay and Jan from our group) + others from Prof. Ralf Stannarius's group in Magdeburg, Germany, observed LC shell behavior in a micro gravity environment made possible through several parabolic flights initiated in a plane provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Read about & see her experience here on the FNR's site: Spotlight on Young Researchers: Anjali Sharma

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Anjali’s PhD is funded by the FNR’s PRIDE programme in the framework of the Doctoral Training Unit (DTU) MASSENA, which has the goal to improve the understanding and the performance of materials used in sensing and energy harvesting



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Free access to recently published article!

Happy new year! Starting this year with free access to our recently published article “Influence of head group and chain length of surfactants used for stabilising liquid crystal shells”. It's free for first 50 readers. Enjoy reading.
Here is the link:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IYDnU3EmF4siHuDtK3Km/full



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Welcome to Rijeesh and Nikolay.

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Rijeesh Nikolay

Welcome to our new post-doc Rijeesh (left) and phd Nikolay (right) who have joined our team. Rijeesh will be working on making cholesteric LC shells for reflector tags. While Nikolay will aim to generate tube-shaped liquid crystal elastomer actuators for biomedical applications.




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Welcometo Cyrine - Our New Intern

Welcome to our new short term intern - Cyrine Charni!

She will work alongside Anshul in attempting to advance the chemistry regarding our groups' ideas on LCE synthesis

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New Masters Student Joins!

Welcome to our new masters student - Lionel!

He is still checking out our labs and deciding what research project he will contribute to (might be leaning more towards working with Manos & Benjamin on CNC droplets however).

Image uploaded from iOS



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New Paper in Nature Asia

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(Click the image above to read the article online, it is Open-Access)


Congratulations
to Camila, Christina & Jan on the publication in Nature Asia Materials: "Fractionation of cellulose nanocrystals: enhancing liquid crystal ordering without promoting gelation" !

In a successful collaboration with Prof. Roland Sanctuary's group here at the physics & materials science research unit, this latest research on CNCs (cellulose nano crystals) describes in detail how controlling the fractionation of CNCs according to length can help in preventing the onset of gelation in solutions. The experimental results are discussed against what is already known regarding the aggregation of colloids based on the presence of counterions, and what still needs to be established in the field.

According to the authors: "Our results shine new light on the competition between liquid crystal formation and gelation in nanoparticle suspensions and provide a path for enhanced control of CNC self-organization for applications in photonic crystal paper or advanced composites."





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JungHyun defends her PhD thesis!!!

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It was a long time coming - she traveled from South Korea to start her research again Luxembourg as Jan's 1st student in the lab (for the 2nd time actually)

On Friday, March 23rd, 2018 JungHyun Noh successfully defended her doctoral thesis with a presentation on "Tuning liquid crystal self-assembly: from interfacial- to polymer-stabilization"

All of your colleagues wish you a big Congratulations Dr. Noh, & best of luck for your future endeavors & career Laugh






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New Bachelors Student Joins!

Welcome to our new bachelors student - Joana!

She will be learning microfluidic LC shell production and be working with Rao for the next few months Happy

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New Paper in J. of Molecular Liquids

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(Click the figure image above to access the article online, please email Jan if you cannot download the pdf file)



Congratulations
to JungHyun & Rao on the publication in the Journal of Molecular Liquids titled: “Sub-second dynamic phototuning of alignment in azodendrimer-doped nematic liquid crystal shells”!

For the 1st time(!!), a study documents the photoswitching of azodendrimer in liquid crystal shells produced by microfluidics. Ultimately, our group members & colleagues find that phase separation may occur in shells when the dendrimer is in the trans ground state, and that photo switching turns such shells uniform - further indicating that the cis state is better soluble in the LC.

Hooray for the good start to the 2018 year Laugh




(Fyi - Also, I think this paper is the 1st to show results obtained from our new confocal microscope as well…so HD, so cool)

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New Langmuir Paper Released Online

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(Click the graphical abstract image above to access the article online, please email either Jan or Rao if you cannot download the pdf file)


Congratulations to Larry & Rao on the publication in Langmuir titled: “Microfluidic Tensiometry Technique for the Characterization of the Interfacial Tension between Immiscible Liquids”!

This is Larry's 1st paper in our group (!) and also Rao's 1st time serving as last author on a paper (!)

In this study, Larry and Rao borrow inspiration from the biologists and use the novel technique of micropipette aspiration (commonly used to measure the viscoelastic properties of living cells) to measure the interfacial tension of 5CB, water, and surfactants with a high degree of accuracy (from the sub-millinewton per meter to several hundred millinewton per meter range) solely from experimental observations of the droplet deformation. This is highly unique as information on the liquid density is not needed to find the interfacial tension.




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YooMee defends her M.Sc. thesis

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Congratulations to YooMee Kye on her successful defense of her M.Sc. thesis entitled "Multi-core liquid crystal-polymer composite fibers produced by electrospinning" at the GSCST, Suwon, Korea, on the 12th of June 2015. Her work (the key results of which we hope will soon appear also as a journal article) is the first study of electrospinning fibers with more than one liquid crystal core, importantly with each core containing a different liquid crystal. This gives one and the same fiber multiple functionalities and the ability to respond to different stimuli. Below you see us enjoying an excellent Korean dinner as we celebrated the defense in the evening.
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Visitors from the USA

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Also this summer we have the pleasure to host three students from the USA, within the framework of an NSF-funded IRES program devoted to liquid crystal fibers and filaments, headed by Prof. Tony Jakli at Kent State University (co-PIs are Prof. Margaret Frey, Cornell, and Prof. John West, Kent State University). This year our visitors are Emily Kerr, Aditi Naik and Vanessa Sanchez. Here you see them enjoying Luxembourgish Flammkuchen together with Jan and Catherine (who is the local group member working the most with them during their stay).

Camila Honorato joins as doctoral candidate

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We welcome Camila Honorato as a member of our group! She will be working as a doctoral candidate in the MISONANCE project, carried out in collaboration with the team of Prof. Tanja Schilling at PhyMS, UL. Camila will study the self-assembly of water-suspended cellulose nanocrystals into lyotropic liquid crystal phases, and how this self-assembly competes with the tendency of electrostatically charged nanorod suspensions to arrest into a jammed state. She will interact closely with Anja Kuhnold from Prof. Schilling's group, who is doing theory and computer modeling corresponding to Camila's experiments.

Benjamin Henx joins the group

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Benjamin Henx, bachelor student in the University of Luxembourg physics program, will do his thesis work together with JungHyun during the 2015 spring semester. He will be working on microfluidics, liquid crystals and polymerization.



Sammy Wagner joins the group

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Sammy Wagner, student in the University of Luxembourg Master program for physics, will carry out his Master thesis work in the Experimental Soft Matter Physics group. He will be working with suspensions of cellulose nanocrystals, studying liquid crystal and glass formation in connection to our project on the topic, MISONANCE.


Duckhee Kim comes to Luxembourg

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Duckhee Kim, who did an internship with Jan while Duckhee did his undergraduate studies at SKKU and Jan was at SNU, is starting his Master studies in physics at University of Luxembourg. He joins the Experimental Soft Matter Physics group on part-time basis as a 'student researcher'.

JungHyun Noh joins as Ph.D. candidate

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JungHyun Noh is the group's first Ph.D. candidate after the move to Luxembourg. She secured a personal Ph.D. grant from the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (FNR) for a project entitled ULISCO. The project deals with innovative ways of making liquid crystal shells as well as the study of the topological defects arising in these shells.

Kevin defends his B.Sc. thesis

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Congrats to Kevin for defending his B.Sc. thesis entitled "Topological Defects in Liquid Crystal Shells" very successfully. Kevin did a great job while he was with us and we hope that his and JungHyun's research efforts will soon be summarized in a new paper.

Kevin Reguengo de Sousa joins the group

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Kevin Reguengo de Sousa, undergraduate student in the University of Luxembourg physics program, will be carrying out his thesis work with the group during the fall. He will work together with JungHyun on liquid crystal shells.

Catherine Reyes joins the group

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It is with great pleasure that we welcome our new Ph.D. candidate, Catherine Reyes, coming from Cornell University where she carried out her Master studies with Prof. Margaret Frey. Catherine should have arrived already in September but the paper work for allowing a US citizen and Cornell graduate to start as Ph.D. candidate in Luxembourg turned out to be beyond our wildest imagination… Anyway, she is finally here and she will be working full time on liquid crystal-funcationalized electrospun fibers for wearable technology.

JungHyun awarded for her presentation at KLCC

IMG_3999IMG_4028JungHyun Noh received a best presentation award for her talk at the Korean Liquid Crystal Conference in Jeonju, 23rd-24th of January 2014, on the microfluidic preparation of cholesteric liquid crystal droplets and the analysis of their photonic behaviour. Congratulations! This work was also recently published in Journal of Materials Chemistry C, which chose to feature her work on the cover page.

JungHyun defends her M.Sc. thesis

JungHyunDefenceCongratulations to JungHyun Noh who successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis, “Two Novel Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Systems: Microfluidics-Produced Droplets and Self-Assembled Cellulose Nanocrystal Films” on the 6th of December 2013 at the Graduate School of Convergence Science & Technology. The thesis will soon be available for download from the publications page.

Hsin-Ling defends her Ph.D. thesis

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Congratulations to Dr. Hsin-Ling Liang who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, “Microfluidic Produced Liquid Crystalline Shells: Self-assembled structures in nematic and smectic shells” on the 25th of September 2013 at Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. The thesis will soon be available for download from the publications page.


Stefan defends his PhD.

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Congratulations to Dr. Stefan Schymura who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, “Liquid Crystalline Carbon Nanotube Suspensions: From Unique Challenges to Unique Properties” on the 4th of July 2013 at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. The thesis is available for download in pdf format by following this link.






YooMee Kye joins the SNM lab

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YooMee Kye, new student at the GSCST on a combined Master-PhD track, joins the SNM lab. She will (at least to begin with) be working with electrospinning of liquid crystal-functionalized fibers with multiple cores.


Eva Enz defends her Ph.D.

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Congratulations to Dr. Eva Enz who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, “Electrospun Polymer - Liquid Crystal Composite Fibres” on the 16th of April 2013 at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. The thesis is available for download in pdf format by following this link.





GSCST campus visit/convergence concert programs

Two information events for students interested in joining the GSCST are coming up:
  • 9th of October in the AICT Conference Room A101, Gwanggyo Campus
  • 11th of October, Mogam Hall 1st floor, Gwanak Campus.
  • GSCST_student_recruitment_poster

Four new students join the group

With the 2012 spring semester starting on the first of March, three new M.Sc. students and one new Ph.D. student join the SNM lab:
@import((NewStudents2012))

Statement on diversity

Following the GRC (Gordon Research) Conference on Liquid Crystals Jan, Catherine, JungHyun and Anshul attended this June in Maine, and a seminar on gender inclusion within research labs Jan and Anshul attended, we felt it was necessary to include a statement about this on our website.

We live in polarizing times when it's become easier than ever to ostracize people just because they may think a bit differently, or look a bit differently, from us, but actually these individual traits can help our communities work and think better.

Have a look at our statement under the Team menu under On Diversity & Inclusion.



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New Phd Students! Anjali & Shameek

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Welcome to both Anjali (left) and Shameek (right) who have joined our team as phd students starting in July.
Anjali will be working on making LC shells for advancing bio-related projects, while Shameek will be working on finding new polymers for advancing applications related to electrospun LC-fibers.



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Ross Volpe visits the ESMP group

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We have the pleasure to be hosting Ross Volpe, Ph.D. candidate, from Prof. Christopher Yakacki's group at the University of Denver, Colorado, USA, until August (the longest we've had a guest over yet!).
During his stay, he will mostly work with Rao on further advancing the actuation of micro shells & also start the development on actuating cylinders. We hope that these months will result in a great collaboration!



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