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Comparative study of thin film Cholesteric Liquid Crystal (CLC) lasers made from different materials and optically pumped by external solid state laser reveals a striking dependence of lasing behaviour (ranging from single mode at the edge…

Rotational motion of charges in plasmonic nanostructures plays an important role in transferring angular momentum between light and matter on the nanometer scale. Although sophisticated control of rotational charge motion has been achieved…

Active motion at complex fluid-fluid interfaces is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. However, an intriguing question that is not fully addressed is how active motion affects and gets influenced by its complex environment. Here, we design a…

The ability to modulate light at high speeds is of paramount importance for telecommunications, information processing, and medical imaging technologies. This has stimulated intense efforts to master optoelectronic switching at visible and…

Anisotropic particles oriented in a specific direction can act as artificial atoms and molecules, and their controlled assembly can result in a wide variety of ordered structures. Towards this, we demonstrate the orientation transitions of…

The relaxation dynamics of a model fluid of platelike colloidal particles is investigated by means of a phenomenological dynamic density functional theory. The model fluid approximates the particles within the Zwanzig model of restricted…

We demonstrate that the active thermocapillary stresses induced by multiple microbubbles offer simple routes to directed self-assembly and complex but controllable micromanipulation of mesoscopic colloidal particles embedded in a liquid.…

Hybrid nanophotonics based on metal-dielectric nanostructures unifies the advantages of plasmonics and all-dielectric nanophotonics providing strong localization of light, magnetic optical response and specifically designed scattering…

Surface plasmons in a centrosymmetric metal nanocrystal have been perceived as achiral, based on the quantum-mechanical theory of molecular optical activity. The one-electron theory is insufficient to describe optical activity in crystals,…

Colloidal glasses form from hard spheres, nearly hard spheres, ellipsoids and platelets or their attractive variants have been studied in detail. Complementing and checking theoretical approaches and simulations, the many different types of…

Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…

Gold-silica hybrids are appealing in different fields of applications like catalysis, sensors, drug delivery, and biotechnology. In most cases, the morphology and distribution of the hetero-units play significant roles in their functional…

We study experimentally and numerically the motion of a self-phoretic active particle in two-dimensional (2D) loosely-packed colloidal crystals at fluid interfaces. Two scenarios emerge depending on the interaction between the active…

Controlling nanostructure from molecular, crystal lattice to the electrode level remains as arts in practice, where nucleation and growth of the crystals still require more fundamental understanding and precise control to shape the…

Precise manipulation of shape-morphing responsive materials is crucial for applications in soft robotics and adaptive structures. While notable precision has been achieved in thin two-dimensional sheets, an accurate volumetric…

In a nematic gel, the appearance of nematic order is accompanied by a spontaneous elongation of the gel parallel to the nematic director. If such a gel is made chiral, it has a tendency to form a cholesteric helical texture, in which local…

A choreographic time crystal is a dynamic lattice structure in which the points comprising the lattice move in a coordinated fashion. These structures were initially proposed for understanding the motion of synchronized satellite swarms.…

We introduce a phenomenological theory for a new class of soft active fluids, with the ability to synchronise. Our theoretical framework describes the macroscopic behaviour of a collection of interacting anisotropic elements with cyclic…

Efficient mixing and pumping of liquids at the microscale is a technology that is still to be optimized. The combination of an AC electric field with a small temperature gradient leads to a strong electro-thermal flow that can be used for…

Electrically-controlled dynamics of fluids and particles at microscales is a fascinating area of research with applications ranging from microfluidics and sensing to sorting of biomolecules. The driving mechanisms are electric forces acting…