Congrats to Yong on the publication of his cholesteric microshells study in the journal Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group)! Together with JungHyun he succeeded in preparing shells from different cholesteric liquid crystal mixtures, giving selective reflection in different color ranges. He has developed a new method to rapidly remove defects by annealing through osmosis, and then he polymerizes a fraction of the mixture that is sufficient to make the shells robust under considerable mechanical deformation. With the help of our collaborators Romano Rupp (University of Vienna) and Irena Drevensek-Olenik (University of Ljubljana) we analyze the complex optics of the photonic cross communication between the shells, finding that the communication is active even between shells with different reflection colors, opening up new communication channels (picture). Finally, our collaborator at the Interdisciplinary Center for Security and Trust (SnT) at the University of Luxembourg, Dr. Gabriele Lenzini, provides a thorough and critical discussion on how the patterns generated by the shells may be used in secure authentication. The paper is Open Access, so please download and read it at http://www.nature.com/articles/srep26840 (and make sure to check the nice movies in the Supporting Information!).

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