Harvesting light in new liquid crystal based smart materials

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Applications are invited for a PhD position in the Soft Photonics Systems group at the University of Southampton in the U.K, in collaboration with the University of Strasbourg in France.This PhD project focuses on designing and building a new class of light harvesting smart materials based on liquid crystals and analysing numerically their electromagnetic response.The proposed research will embed the PhD student in a team of experimental physicists and mathematicians to create new liquid crystal systems that adapt their optical properties based on the intensity of the light illuminating them. Once fully developed their applications may range from energy conservation to optical limiters to protect sensitive detectors. This project will provide an exciting opportunity to operate in a truly interdisciplinary environment, while learning some key experimental, manufacturing and data analysis skills that will be applicable in a wide variety of contexts. The core of the PhD research project will be to realise new multi-layer structures with photosensitive materials and measure their electromagnetic response. An integral part of the project will be the analysis of experimental data and using numerical techniques to extract material parameter values from their optical response. A student on this project will be trained in experimental techniques in micro-structured liquid crystal optics, in numerical techniques for liquid crystal optics and in parameter fitting to extract material parameters from experimental data.