Yuan Shen featured ILCS liquid crystal artist, November 2020

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Yuan Shen got master degree in the School of Electronic Science and Technology of Xiamen University, China and now he is a third year PhD student in the group of Ingo Dierking at the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Manchester, UK. He is currently working on the general topic of liquid crystal – nanoparticle dispersions.

His personal homepage:
https://scholar.google.com
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The image shows a transmission polarizing microscopic texture of a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) with negative dielectric anisotropy in a cell with a homeotropic boundary condition at a magnification of x100. The CLC sample was dispersed with 10um microparticles and applied with a low electric field which is perpendicular to the cell substrates. The polarizers were crossed with an angle about 150 degrees. The sample was observed at room temperature.
Jury comment: It is a beautiful blue texture and with the microparticles it does indeed look like stars in a dark sky with a shooting star with a red trail present