Congratulations to Rijeesh and the team for the new article "Facile Anisotropic Deswelling Method for Realizing Large‐Area Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Elastomers with Uniform Structural Color and Broad‐Range Mechanochromic Response" published in Advanced Functional Materials.



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Congratulations to Larry! Who recently defended his Ph.D thesis on "Liquid Metals and Liquid Crystals Subject to Flow: From Fundamental Fluid Physics to Functional Fibers"

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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.






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Congratulations to Anjali, Jampani, and Jan on their new article published in Langmuir: "Realignment of liquid crystal shells driven by temperature-dependent surfactant solubility"

This is the study of nematic LC shells stabilized by temperature responsive surfactant. Study shows how one can change the alignment of LC just by varying the temperature. Click here for the full article.






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

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

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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Yong, our previous postdoc, has returned to conduct further research on applying the LC shells we make in lab to solving practical issues with security authentication.

His project is in collaboration with Prof. Gabriele Lenzini from the SNT (Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust) & is funded by the FNR (the Luxembourg National Research Fund).

The project is called "SSH: Security in the Shell", more details can be found here

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