Congratulations to Yansong, Jan, alumni Rijeesh and Hakam, and our collaborators in the Laboratory for Photovoltaics for their recent publication, "Arbitrary and active colouring of solar cells with negligible loss of efficiency", in Energy & Environmental Science! As part of the FNR-funded project LETZCOLOR, this recent work explores the use of polymerized liquid crystals to beautify solar cell panels without any cost to the performance of the panels.

The article is free to access and read; a very nice way to end the year!



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team, publications post-doc , Liquid Crystal, Photovoltaics

Welcome Emily,

Emily is a visiting PhD student from Prof. Emily Davidson's research group in Princeton University, USA. In our group, she is investigating the effect of chiral dopants on spontaneous symmetry-breaking in monodisperse 'flexible' bent-core LC oligomers she has synthesized. She is also working on tuning liquid crystal elastomer phase behavior, actuation, and optical properties via the chemical incorporation of these 'flexible' bent-core LC's.

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team, visitors

Welcome back Rebecca,

After one year, Rebecca finished her B.S. in Industrial Design and come back for an internship to help our group members construct equipment and experimental setups for various projects.



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team, Group, ESMP Group

Welcome back to Axel (left) and Yosuke (right)

After one year, Axel and Yosuke rejoin our group for their master project.

They both will engaged in the REVEAL project. Axel will focus on developing methods to create CLCE films that are suitable for a wide range of practical applications. Yosuke will focus on the development of liquid crystal polymer fibres, designed to exhibit mechanochromic response, employing a microfluidics wet spinning technique.

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team, Group, esmp group

Welcome to Valentin (left) and Claudia (right)

Valentin and Claudia join our group for their bachelor project.

Valentin will work on Computer simulation of evaporative flows during cholesteric liquid crystal elastomer preparation.

Claudia will work together with Deniz on finding the refractive indices of nematic liquid crystal mixture.


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team, Group, esmp group

Welcome to Axel (left) and Yosuk (right)

Axel and Yosuke join our group for their bachelor project.

Axel will investigate the isotropic-nematic phase transition of liquid crystal oligomers and the impact of the concentration of chiral dopant on the ground-state color of cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs).

Yosuke will study the small-scale limit of cholesteric spherical reflectors (CSRs).

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team, Group, ESMP Group,

Welcome to Yansong

Yansong is a materials researcher specialised in light-responded elastomers and self-organizing polymer networks. He received his Master and PhD degree in chemical engineering from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. After that he did three-years post-doc in Prof. Chia-Rong Lee’s group in the department of photonics at same university to develop smart actuators, liquid crystal laser and planar optics. He attempts to synthesis anisotropic polymers with new functionalities and integrate them into optical devices to meet industrial and societal challenges. In January 2022 he became a member of ESMP and is working on to electrospinning fibers and Cholesteric Spherical Reflectors to make innovative pathogen sampling filters and reporters of biomolecular binding events.

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team, Group, esmp group

Welcome to Tabea.

Tabea is a master student at the University of Stuttgart. She is in our group for an internship for 2.5 months. She will work on the fractionation of Chitin-based nanocrystal, which tend to form a chiral nematic phase.

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team, Group, ESMP Group

ESMP welcomes Xu and Xiang, both are doing their master thesis with us.
Xu will be working on the spontaneous adsorption and self-organization of colloid particles at fluid interfaces induced by surfactants and Xiang will focus on the preparation of liquid crystal shells by controlled phase separation in droplets.

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master student, team