Brecht Berteloot featured ILCS liquid crystal artist, December 2021

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Brecht Berteloot is doing a PhD in the Liquid Crystals and Photonics group at Ghent University in Belgium. His PhD is under supervision of Prof. Kristiaan Neyts and Prof. Jeroen Beeckman and was in collaboration with ScioTeq, an advanced display manufacturer located in Kortrijk, Belgium. His interests are related to the fabrication of flat LC based optical components and 3D LC structures.

Brecht Berteloot's research articles can be found at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brecht-Berteloot
The website of the Liquid Crystals and Photonics group: https://lcp.elis.ugent.be/

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The image is an observation of a LC cell using a polarization microscope. In this LC cell, the top substrate has uniform rubbed alignment and the bottom substrate defines the LC director through patterned photoalignment. The patterned photoalignment is done using the projection of a spatial light modulator (SLM). The image displayed on the SLM defines different amounts of phase retardations which are converted to different rotations of linear polarization. To celebrate Christmass and the end of the year, we made a Christmass card and recorded it onto the photoalignment layer.
Jury comment: The picture was obtained from a Liquid crystal cell in which the bottom substrate uses a patterned photoalignment that defines the Christmas "image" observed between crossed polarizers under a microscope.