Together with the groups of Prof. Rudolf Zentel in Mainz, Germany (where the SNM lab “external student” Hsin-Ling Liang is conducting the second half of her Ph.D. work under joint guidance of Prof.s Zentel and Lagerwall) and Prof. Frank Giesselmann in Stuttgart, Germany, we have succeeded in producing shells of a nematic liquid crystalline elastomer using a slightly modified version of the standard microfluidic set-up for liquid crystal shell production. We demonstrated how these shells can be used for one-piece self-assembled micropumps, actuated by inducing the phase transition between nematic and isotropic states, with application potential e.g. in 3D microfluidics.

Our work was published in Nature Communications in a paper entitled “One-piece micropumps from liquid crystalline core-shell particles”, with 30 October 2012 as official release date. However, due to the impact of hurricane Sandy on the New York office of Nature Communications they have until today been unable to update their web site, hence the paper is still not accessible for download. As soon as operations are back to normal, you should be able to download the paper using the DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2193. Until then, you can request the paper directly from [email protected] or contact Jan here.

You can also read a 1-page popular science introduction to the paper here.

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