Michael Tuchband, featured ILCC liquid crystal artist, June 2017

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Michael Tuchband is a physics PhD student working under the guidance of Dr. Noel Clark in the Soft Materials Research Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. He obtained his B.Sc. in physics at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ and his MS in physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. For the final portion of his PhD work, Michael is investigating the twist-bend liquid crystal phase and other liquid crystal systems using resonant x-ray scattering techniques at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in Berkeley, CA. For a list of publications please see Michael’s LinkedIn account: www.linkedin.com/in/michael-tuchband.

Contact: michael.tuchband@colorado.edu
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This image exhibits phase transition from the cholesteric phase on the left to the twist-bend nematic phase on the right. The material is a mixture of the bent flexible dimer CB7CB and the rod-like chiral dopant CB15. The cell is a commercial cell with unidirectional alignemnt in the horizontal direction. Picture width is 950 microns.
Jury comment: Again the selected photo is from the twist-bend nematic phase. The transformation from Ch (left) to NTB (right) looks like the Sun and the solar wind stream.