2014
Kevin defends his B.Sc. thesis
19/12/14 18:23
![Kevin](kevin.jpg)
Bandol Summer School on Liquid Crystals
28/09/14 18:32
![PA040390-2](pa040390-2.jpg)
Kevin Reguengo de Sousa joins the group
22/09/14 18:20
![Kevin](kevin.jpg)
Duckhee Kim comes to Luxembourg
11/09/14 18:38
![Duckhee](duckhee.jpg)
New article on electrospinning in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
29/08/14 16:33
A beautiful study by Dae Kyom, demonstrating how capillary forces from water condensing on the outside of fibers during electrospinning can drastically influence the shape and core content of the fibers, is now published as an article in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 6, 18, 16441−16447 (2014). You can find the paper here (subscription required).
JungHyun gives talk at Liquid Matter 2014
20/07/14 07:04
![IMG_5539](img_5539-2.jpg)
![IMG_5622](img_5622.jpg)
JungHyun and Jan are attending the 9th Liquid Matter 2014 conference in Lisbon, where JungHyun gives a talk entitled "Tunable multicolored patterns from photonic cross communication between cholesteric liquid crystal droplets" (Jan just got a poster
![Winking](../../rw_common/plugins/blog/smiley_wink.png)
Three American guests
21/06/14 06:58
![IMG_5500](img_5500.jpg)
JungHyun Noh joins as Ph.D. candidate
15/04/14 18:27
![J_Noh](j_noh.jpg)
New ChemPhysChem paper on cholesteric liquid crystals of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC)
03/04/14 19:04
For a special issue of ChemPhysChem on the physical properties and behaviour of liquid crystals, we published a study on how the orientation and pitch of the helix in films formed by drying cholesteric liquid crystalline suspensions of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) can be controlled with high accuracy based on a few simple considerations. The first point is that tactic boundaries, always present if one starts with suspensions that are in the phase coexistence regime, randomize the orientation of the helix, thereby giving rise to the irregular mosaic texture (left) often seen when drying films from low concentration CNC suspensions. By simply raising the concentration such that the initial suspension is fully liquid crystalline, a film with uniformly standing helix and much more uniform pitch can be achieved (right). Moreover, we show that an orbital shear flow can have a good effect in orienting the helix even when tactoids cannot be avoided. The work is a collaboration with the LC Nano lab of Prof. Giusy Scalia and the group of Prof. Lennart Bergström at the Materials and Environmental Chemistry Department of Stockholm University. You can find the paper at the ChemPhysChem web site here. Unfortunately, we could not include color images in the final version of the paper, so be sure to also download the Supporting Information file, which contains all images in color version (the color is important for the discussion).
Note: if you want to learn more about liquid crystals from CNC, please check out our recent review article (open access!) in NPG Asia Materials.
Note: if you want to learn more about liquid crystals from CNC, please check out our recent review article (open access!) in NPG Asia Materials.
Zornitza Tosheva joins the group
01/04/14 18:30
![Zory](zory.jpg)
Jan gives honorary lecture at the German Liquid Crystal Conference
26/03/14 20:18
At the 2014 German Liquid Crystal Conference in Magdeburg Jan was invited to deliver the honorary Vorländervorlesung. The title of his presentation, which contained some quite general reflections about our current research situation, was "With an open attitude, new doors open".
Move to Luxembourg
01/03/14 19:17
![Seoul-Lux_move_3images](seoul-lux_move_3images.png)
Bernd Wicklein visits the SNM and LC Nano groups
28/01/14 01:13
![BerndWicklein](berndwicklein-2.jpg)
JungHyun awarded for her presentation at KLCC
25/01/14 04:11
![IMG_3999](img_3999.jpg)
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New review on cellulose nanocrystal self-assembly in NPG Asia Materials
11/01/14 08:44
Our review article on the balance between liquid crystalline self-assembly and glass formation in colloidal suspensions of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) is now published (open access!) in NPG Asia Materials. You can download it without subscription from the nature.com web site here. The paper is a result of our collaboration with Lennart Bergström’s group at Stockholm University as well as with Giusy Scalia’s group here at the GSCST. We discuss how the tendency for liquid crystalline ordering in colloidal suspensions of crystalline nanorods of cellulose competes with gelation, or glass formation. The liquid crystal formation dominates at low CNC concentration but at somewhat higher concentrations gelation sets in and prevents further changes of the liquid crystal phase diagram, as well as a further reduction under equilibrium conditions in the helical pitch of the chiral nematic phase that is the single liquid crystal phase found so far in CNC suspension. We briefly discuss how one might proceed to shift the balance in favor of liquid crystal ordering and thus see also transitions to higher ordered liquid crystal phases, e.g. columnar or smectic.
Feature on J. Mater. Chem. C cover page
09/01/14 12:47
Journal of Materials Chemistry C chose to feature our article on photonic cross communication between cholesteric droplets on the front page of issue 5, volume 2, 2014. Congratulations JungHyun!