20.11.2019 Study on the Self-Assembly of Liquid Crystals in Nanoporous Solids for Adaptive Photonic Metamaterials published in Nanoscale.
X-ray scattering and optical polarimetry evidence in agreement with Monte Carlo computer simulations that confinement-controlled self-assembly of liquid crystals in nanopores allows for designing photonic metamaterials with adaptive birefringence. Movies illustrating 3-D reciprocal space mapping of a nanopore-confined columnar liquid crystal based on synchrotron-based X-ray scattering along with the peculiar textures found in the study can be downloaded from the TORE repository of Hamburg University of Technology. This work is dedicated to Prof. Peter S. Pershan (Harvard University), a pioneer in the field of soft-condensed-matter physics, on his 85th birthday, remembering his mentoring in synchrotron-based X-ray scattering from liquids. See also the press release "Tuneable self-organisation of liquid crystals in nano pores" (in English) or Steuerbare Selbstorganisation von Flüssigkristallen in Nanoporen (auf Deutsch).
