Physicists create 'recipe book' for building new materials
12 Jan 2013
By showing that tiny particles injected into a liquid crystal medium adhere to existing mathematical theorems, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have opened the door for the creation of a host of new materials with properties that do not exist in nature.
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| This image shows polarised light interacting with a particle injected into a liquid crystal medium. Photo by CU-Boulder scientists Bohdan Senyuk and Ivan Smalyukh |
The findings show that researchers can create a "recipe book" to build new materials of sorts using topology, a major mathematical field that describes the properties that do not change when an object is stretched, bent or otherwise ''continuously deformed.''
The study also is the first to experimentally show that some of the most important topological theorems hold up in the real material world, says CU-Boulder physics department Assistant Professor Ivan Smalyukh, a study senior author.
The research could lead to upgrades in liquid crystal displays, like those used in laptops and television screens, to allow them to interact with light in new and different ways. One possibility is to create liquid crystal displays that are even more energy efficient, Smalyukh said, extending the battery life for the devices they're attached to.
The research was funded in part by Smalyukh's Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which he received from President Barack Obama in 2010. And the research supports the goals laid out by the White House's Materials Genome Initiative, Smalyukh says, which seeks to deploy ''new advanced materials at least twice as fast as possible today, at a fraction of the cost.''
Smalyukh, post-doctoral researcher Bohdan Senyuk, and doctoral student Qingkun Liu set up the experiment by creating colloids - solutions in which tiny particles are dispersed, but not dissolved, throughout a host medium. Colloids are common in everyday life and include substances such as milk, jelly, paint, smoke, fog and shaving cream.
