Full Text:
When a National Science Foundation-funded researcher set out to investigate patterns in liquid crystals, she didn’t know what to expect. She confined the liquid crystals within droplets, creating shells floating in water. When she first looked through the microscope, she saw dancing iridescent spheres with fingerprint-like patterns etched into them that spiraled and flattened as the solution they were floating in changed.
However, the importance of the results stretch far beyond their aesthetic appeal, with possible applications in biosensing and energy harvesting. Liquid crystals, fluids with aligned phases of constituent molecules, are used in everything from computer and television displays to mood rings. Since liquid crystals are made of rod-like molecules, they have special optical properties, such as changing color as they interact with electrical signals or light.Image credit: Lisa Tran
