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Highlights

Feb 27, 2012
University of Colorado at Boulder

Picoprojectors using Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Microdisplays

Center researchers are collaborating with spin-off Displaytech to develop FLC materials for application in picoprojectors. The high quality time sequential color and high brightness enabled by FLC switching speed makes FLC-on-silicon an excellent display technology for picoprojectors, currently being marketed by 3M.
Feb 27, 2012
University of Colorado at Boulder

Liquid Crystals a Sensitive Probe of DNA Hybridization

Liquid crystals that realign in response to DNA can reveal subtle sequence alterations, even a single base mutation. Center investigator Dan Schwartz.and doctoral student Andrew Price showed that nematic liquid crystals, which naturally align themselves perpendicular to the surface of a surfactant-coated glass slide, tilt slightly following the addition of short lengths of single stranded DNA.
Feb 24, 2012
University of Pennsylvania

Quantum Dot Circuits

Cherie R. Kagan and Christopher B. Murray

Kagan and Murray fabricated the first electronic circuits from nanometer scale semiconductor particles known as quantum dots. These quantum dots are synthesized in solution and tailored in the shape of cubes so when they are assembled into solids, they fill space. The nanoscale cubes allow for high performance thin film electronics. The chemistry developed further allowed these circuits to be realized on plastics for flexible electronic applications.
Feb 24, 2012
University of Pennsylvania

Soft Spots in Disordered Colloidal Packings

Andrea J. Liu and Arjun G. Yodh

Like liquids, solids can flow under applied shear stresses.  In crystalline solids, figuring out vulnerable regions where the material will break under stress is well-established—they are typically controlled by a population of defects in the crystal structure known as dislocations.  In disordered solids, however, defects are everywhere, making the task of identifying such vulnerable spots much more daunting.
Feb 20, 2012
Northwestern University

NSF-Nanoelectronics Research Initiative

Generating, Probing and Manipulating Excitons in Carbon-based Nanomaterials        Density gradient ultracentrifugation leads to isolation of monodisperse graphene flakes