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Hyperbolic (or indefinite) materials have attracted significant attention due to their unique capabilities for engineering electromagnetic space and controlling light propagation. A current challenge is to find a hyperbolic material with…
The bent-core liquid crystals (LCs) are highly regarded as the next-generation materials for electro-optic devices. The nematic (N) phase of these LCs possesses highly ordered smectic-like cybotactic clusters which are promising in terms of…
Photonic crystals and metamaterials are two overarching paradigms for manipulating light. Combining the two approaches leads to hypercrystals: hyperbolic dispersion metamaterials that undergo periodic modulation and mix…
The phase-field-crystal model for liquid crystals is solved numerically in two spatial dimensions. This model is formulated with three position-dependent order parameters, namely the reduced translational density, the local nematic order…
We demonstrate facile optical manipulation of shape of birefringent colloidal microparticles made from liquid crystal elastomers. Using soft lithography and polymerization, we fabricate elastomeric microcylinders with weakly undulating…
In modern two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as graphene-based systems and atomically-thin transition-metal dichalcogenides, the interplay of strong electronic correlations, tunable moir\'e superlattices, and nontrivial band topology has…
The rheology of coextruded layered films of polystyrene/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS/PMMA) has been studied with small and large amplitude oscillations at a temperature above their glass transition. While the complex viscosity remains…
Chalcogenide glasses are exceptional materials that show a wide contrast in optical properties upon phase change and are highly researched for reconfigurable electronic and nanophotonic devices. Here, we report the first proof-of-concept…
We have experimentally demonstrated polarizers and polarizing beam splitters based on microwave-scale two-dimensional photonic crystals. Using polarized microwaves within certain frequency bands, we have observed a squared-sinusoid (Malus)…
Spontaneous formation of polarization gratings by liquid crystals made of bent dimeric molecules is reported. The grating is formed within the temperature range of the twist bend modulated nematic phase, NTB, without the necessity to…
The fabrication of flexible single-crystalline plasmonic or photonic components in a scalable way is fundamentally important to flexible electronic and photonic devices with high speed, high energy efficiency, and high reliability. However,…
In equilibrium liquid crystals, chirality leads to a variety of spectacular three-dimensional structures, but chiral and achiral phases with the same broken continuous symmetries have identical long-time, large-scale dynamics. In this…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
Optical metamaterials have the potential to control the flow of light at will which may lead to spectacular applications as the perfect lens or the cloaking device. Both of these optical elements require invariant effective material…
Polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) composites have long been a focus of study for their unique electro-optical properties which have resulted in various applications such as switchable (transparent/translucent) windows. These…
We report on a new experimental procedure for forming and studying polar smectic liquid crystal films. A free standing smectic film is put in contact with a liquid drop, so that the film has one liquid crystal/liquid interface and one…
The optical properties of photonic structures made with more than two materials are very interesting for optical filtering and lighting applications. Herein, we compared the transmission properties of one-dimensional photonic crystals made…
Optical modes of a multilayered photonic structure with the twisted nematic liquid crystal as a defect layer have been investigated. The electroconvective flow in the nematic makes a spatially periodic structure in the form of abnormal…
Photonic crystals of close-packed arrays of air spheres in a dielectric background of titania have been fabricated with a novel ceramic technique. Unlike previous methods, ordering of the spheres and the formation of the titania network are…
We report on fast electro-optic switching (response time 0.1 ms) of a blue-phase-polymer templated nematic with a broad-temperature range of thermodynamic stability and hysteresis-free performance. The nematic fills a polymer template that…