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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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Our group is officially hosting the 1st ever TEDx event at the University of Luxembourg! The date for the event was just announced to occur on
Oct. 26, 2018! :D While we cannot actually give talks ourselves on our projects and perspectives, there's still plenty of opportunities for others to get involved in suggesting speaker ideas, or in applying to speak themselves.

Click here to see the official announcement from the university's team & to get more info!




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

Congratulations to Matt & Jan on the new publication in Advanced Materials: “Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Shells as Enabling Material for Information‐Rich Design and Architecture”!

Matt is a long time collaborator of Jan's since his time as a professor at SNU in South Korea. Some of us in the group got the chance to meet him, but eventually we'll all see each other again in a few days when Matt stops by our lab. Originally an architect by training, Matt worked on (and is probably still working on) many interdisciplinary projects involving robotics, and functional architecture design. He is currently a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

In this new article Matt, Jan and a few other collaborators at the SNT (Security, Reliability and Trust) Centre in Luxembourg discuss the possibilities of using cholesteric LC shells as sources for information technology in various architecture, drone, and robotics concepts and applications.






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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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The conference abstract booklets are all printed & ready to be distributed next week! Be sure to check the site: http://www.lcsoftmatter.com/glcc18lux/ for updates, confirm meal selections, & know poster #s in advance. See you there!





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

Congratulations to Anshul & Jan on the publication in Materials: “Electrospun Composite Liquid Crystal Elastomer Fibers”!

This is the first study to date that shows and analyzes the irreversible actuation of photo-crosslinkable reactive mesogens single axially electrospun with a carrier polymer, to create liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fibers. Don't forget to check out the supplementary info for more details!






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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 :D




(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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(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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