A team at the University of Colorado Boulder has designed new kinds of liquid crystals that mirror the complex structures of some solid crystals—a major step forward in building flowing materials that ...

Researchers at CU Boulder’s Soft Materials Research Center (SMRC) have discovered an elusive phase of matter, first proposed more than 100 years ago and sought after ever since. Nematic liquid ...

Researchers have developed a new way to control and manipulate optical signals by embedding a liquid crystal layer into waveguides created with direct laser writing. The new devices enable ...

The liquid crystals used in displays nowadays are usually in a nematic phase, i.e. a liquid-like state of almost parallel oriented molecules. However, there is another liquid crystal phase which has a ...

Researchers with the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have shown for the first time how to design the basic elements needed for logic operations using a kind of material ...

A micrometer-sized liquid crystal droplet doped with fluorescent dye functions as a nanosecond optical switch that controls light output using light alone. The resonant cavity design cuts the energy ...

A study finds chiral structures, with mirror-image configurations, can emerge from nonchiral systems, suggesting new ways to engineer these materials. Hold your hands out in front of you, and no ...

The knots in your shoelaces are familiar, but can you imagine knots made from light, water, or from the structured fluids that make LCD screens shine? They exist, and in a new Nature Physics study, ...

Scientists uncovered a quantum spin liquid, a state of matter that may have applications for quantum information. (Nanowerk News) The blue-green lab-grown crystals look like solid rocks, but their ...