The ALCEMISTs from NOVA published an invited Perspective paper highlighting the emerging potential of solvent-free thermotropic cellulose liquid crystals as sustainable photonic materials by connecting molecular chirality, hierarchical self-assembly, processing, and optical functionality. Its main novelty is providing an integrated framework for understanding and designing adaptive cellulose-based photonic systems, directly supporting ALCEMIST's objective of establishing predictive design principles for renewable structural colour materials.

The paper, titled Cellulose-based self-assembled photonic structures: linking chirality, structure and optical function across scales, is published (open access) in Journal of Physics: Photonics, 8, 021001, 2026. Please click here to read it.

Tags: CNC

The ALCEMIST team went to this year's International Liquid Crystal Conference in Québec, Canada! Lena and Jan both gave plenary talks while Luís presented a poster and, while not directly members of ALCEMIST, Yong Geng and Yosuke Pestana Nakamura presented ALCEMIST-adjacent work related to our fiber spinning projects.

Our collaborator Apala Majumdar from the University of Manchester also received the LG Mid-Career Prize from the ILCS!