Postgraduate Opportunities

Postgraduate projects are available on several topics:

1. Liquid crystal - nanotube dispersions

2. Stabilising Blue Phases

3. Graphene Oxide Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

4. Liquid crystals with functional nanoparticles

5. Mimicking magnetotactic bacteria with liquid crystals

6. Chirality and chirality transfer in ferroelectric liquid crystals

7. Coarsening phenomena in anisotropic fluids

8. Electro-migration of nanoparticles in anisotropic liquids

9. Pattern and pattern formation in liquid crystals

10. Liquid crystal-polymer composites

Keywords

• Liquid Crystals
• Soft Matter Physics
• Nanomaterials

Memberships

• former Chair and Vice-Chair of the British Liquid Crystal Society
• Secretary of the International Liquid Crystal Society
• International scientific advisory board of European Conference on Liquid Crystals (ECLC) 2017
• International scienctific advisory board of International Liquid Crystal Conference (ILCC), 2018
• Member of the EPSRC college since 2006
• Member of the Editorial Board of several Soft Matter related journals
• Editor of Liquid Crystals Today

Research Groups

• Non-Linear and Liquid Crystal Physics

Research Institutes

• Photon Science

· Liquid crystal - nanotube dispersions

The self-organising properties of liquid crystals can be used to transfer orientational order onto dispersed nanotubes. These can then be reoriented by application of electric, magnetic or optical fields, leading to externally steered nanotube switches.

· Dispersions of colloidal particles in liquid crystals

The dispersion of colloidal particles in anisotropic fluids leads to a variety of specific defects and pattern formation behaviour. These phenomena are only marginally understood at the present time and the diversity of additional effects by application of external fields is open to be discovered.

· (Lyotropic) graphene oxide liquid crystals

Graphene oxide in water or other isotropic solvents forms a lyotropic nematic phase with many interesting properties. We further investigate carbon based nanomaterials in thermotropic phases, which change their properties, and experience an ordering field through the liquid crystalline order.

· Chirality in anisotropic fluids

Introduction of chirality to anisotropic fluids leads to a variety of new phenomena, such as the formation of helical superstructures, the appearance of novel frustrated phases and polar effects.

· Polar effects in liquid crystals

Polar effects in liquid crystals are mostly (but not exclusively) related to chiral molecules constituent of a variety of different phases. These relate to flexoelectric, ferro-, ferri- and antiferroelectric properties of liquid crystals.

· Polymer modified liquid crystals

Polymer stabilised liquid crystals offer potential for applicational use in reflective displays. At the same time, the underlying fundamental physics of these systems, i.e. the relationship between polymerisation conditions, polymer network morphology, interactions between liquid crystal and polymer network and the resultant electro-optic properties are far from being understood on a quantitative basis.

· Nucleus growth and coarsening in liquid crystalline systems

The growth of nuclei of a thermodynamically favoured phase after a temperature quench across a phase transition can be described by simple universal scaling laws, just as well as the coarsening dynamics at later time scales (defect annihilation). Experimental investigations of both processes are relatively rare for liquid crystalline materials.

· Fractal structures in soft matter materials

The recent discovery of a variety of novel liquid crystalline phases, the so called banana phases, has attracted much experimental and theoretical interest. In contrast to ordinary liquid crystals, these phases exhibit fractal growth aggregates, a commonly observed behaviour in many other soft matter systems, like polymers or colloids.