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[Emeriti-faculty] Reminder: Special Physics and Astronomy Colloquium at 4:00 pm



Good morning:  Special Colloquium today 2/7/11 at 4:00 pm.  See details below.

Monday, February 7, 2011
4:00 pm
TUFTS UNIVERSITY
SPECIAL PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM
Robinson 250
“Controlling Self-Organization of Liquid Crystals with Surface Patterning”
Dr. Tim Atherton
Case Western Reserve University
Liquid crystals, fluids that exhibit long range molecular ordering, are of tremendous commercial importance in switchable optical devices including displays. They exhibit complicated physics: the competing influence of different physical effects such as surface alignment, chirality, applied electromagnetic fields and preferred molecular ordering may cause the system to self-organize into some compromise configuration, typically with long-range spatial order. A recent innovation has been to use surface micro- and nano-patterning techniques—including lithography, microcontact printing and Atomic Force Microscopy—as a route to carefully specify the alignment boundary conditions on the liquid crystal, and hence control the self-assembly. A rich variety of phenomena result: I present a selection from my own work and discuss promising applications for these effects such as electronic paper and switchable metamaterials.
Refreshments served in Robinson 251 at 3:30 pm