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2018

Welcome Andy and Ursa!

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Welcome to our new interns Andy (left) and Ursa (right) who have joined our team.Andy will focus on
Microfluidics for Measuring the Interfacial Tensions of Liquid Crystals. While Ursa will work on the Study of topological defect transformations in LC shells using a dual confocal microscope for controlled polymerization.

New article in Liquid crystals!


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Congratulations
to Anjali & Jan on the new publication in Liquid Crystals: "Influence of head group and chain length of surfactants used for stabilising liquid crystal shells"
This is the systematic study of the effect of different surfactants on Nematic LC shell, in terms of stability and alignment.

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Welcome to Rijeesh and Nikolay.

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Rijeesh Nikolay

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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New Paper in Adv. Funct. Materials!

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



Congratulations
to Rao & Jan on the new publication in Advanced Functional Materials: “Micrometer‐Scale Porous Buckling Shell Actuators Based on Liquid Crystal Networks”!

After collaborating with Dirk Jan last fall on LCE shells (pic below!) , the study describing the actuation in the porous network + a curious discovery of negative birefringence is finally out Laugh & open access.

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TEDx UniLu is Approaching - Ideas Needed!

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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! Laugh 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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Welcometo Cyrine - Our New Intern

Welcome to our new short term intern - Cyrine Charni!

She will work alongside Anshul in attempting to advance the chemistry regarding our groups' ideas on LCE synthesis

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New Paper in Adv. Materials

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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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New Masters Student Joins!

Welcome to our new masters student - Lionel!

He is still checking out our labs and deciding what research project he will contribute to (might be leaning more towards working with Manos & Benjamin on CNC droplets however).

Image uploaded from iOS



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GLCC @ Luxembourg Is a Success

Last week we hosted the 45th German Liquid Crystal Conference & it was a great success.

Many thanks to all of our collaborators & the participants for a great three days of discussions, talks & prizes.

Be sure to check the website : http://www.lcsoftmatter.com/glcc18lux/ for photos of the conference soon!


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New Paper in Nature Asia

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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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JungHyun defends her PhD thesis!!!

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It was a long time coming - she traveled from South Korea to start her research again Luxembourg as Jan's 1st student in the lab (for the 2nd time actually)

On Friday, March 23rd, 2018 JungHyun Noh successfully defended her doctoral thesis with a presentation on "Tuning liquid crystal self-assembly: from interfacial- to polymer-stabilization"

All of your colleagues wish you a big Congratulations Dr. Noh, & best of luck for your future endeavors & career Laugh






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New Bachelors Student Joins!

Welcome to our new bachelors student - Joana!

She will be learning microfluidic LC shell production and be working with Rao for the next few months Happy

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GLCC @ Luxembourg is Fast Approaching!

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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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New Paper in Materials by MDPI Journals


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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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New Paper in J. of Molecular Liquids

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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 Laugh




(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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New Langmuir Paper Released Online

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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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JPCM Review on LCs in Shells, Droplets & Fibers Makes IOP's 2017 Highlights!

Awesome email to get:

2017 highlights email 2 2

Our review on LCs in Droplets, Shells & Fibers got selected for the 2017 highlights list by IOP Publishing!! Yes mega Congrats to our team!!

Thanks to everyone who also read &/or downloaded our article.
We put a lot of effort into trying to make a review as comprehensive, and as accurate, for those outside and in our fields as possible.

If you want to check the highlights click here (Category is: Soft matter, biophysics and liquids) - http://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0953-8984/page/Highlights-2017





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