Alberto Concellon featured ILCS liquid crystal artist, May 2021

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Alberto Concellon obtained his PhD from University of Zaragoza (Spain), working in the “Liquid Crystals and Polymers Group” (https://liquidcrystals.unizar.es) led by Prof. J. L. Serrano. His PhD research was focused on the synthesis of functional liquid crystalline materials. Alberto joined Prof. Tim Swager’s group (http://swagergroup.mit.edu) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall of 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher where he is currently investigating dynamic complex liquid crystal emulsions for biosensing.
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It is a polarized-light optical microscope image of dynamically reconfigurable complex emulsions comprising two immiscible phases, a cholesteric liquid crystal and a fluorocarbon oil. Our colloids present a Janus morphology (i.e. droplets with faces of differing chemistries) with a radial helical organization, which originates from the center of the half-sphere and gives rise to concentric shells of constant refractive index, such that the radial period corresponds to one-half of the cholesteric pitch. These complex emulsions are prepared by a bulk emulsification method that generates polydispersed droplets with diameters ranging from 5 to 200 μm.
Jury comment: The picture reflects an interesting helical structure that originates from complex colloids containing a cholesteric liquid crystal.