New Liquid Crystal Materials Facility

肯特州立大学材料研究部的固态化学项目将建立一个液晶设施，用于研究一类新的液晶材料，即液晶弹性体（CLE）和液晶凝胶（CLG）。 这些新型材料是具有取向有序组分的软质和固体橡胶，取向有序和机械应变之间具有耦合。这种取向与机械应变的耦合将允许液晶材料的柔软性以令人兴奋的新方式被体验和利用，例如创造“橡胶激光器”，它将在拉伸时改变颜色，而LCE样品上的光照可以使它们“弯曲，折叠和游泳远离光线。“这些材料无与伦比的响应性几乎具有普遍的吸引力，即使在应用数学界也对样品有巨大的需求。计划中的设施将专注于生产LCE和LCG，它们的表征，以及将这些材料分发给学术界，政府实验室和工业界感兴趣的科学家。 建立一个在液晶设施方面具有国际领先地位的卓越中心将建立在现有优势的基础上，并将在合成材料的科学家与正在研究和使用这些材料用于设备和应用的科学家之间提供重要的桥梁。培养这一领域的研究生和科学家将大大增加液晶弹性体和凝胶领域的劳动力。 该中心将在美国建立一支强大的工作人员队伍，研究和开发这些材料，这是目前所缺乏的。 此外，研究生将积累培训作为样本工作的副产品，以便这些技术可以在美国更广泛地传播到学术界和工业界。

This award to Kent State University by the Solid State Chemistry program in the Division of Materials Research is to establish a Liquid Crystal Facility for research in a new class of liquid crystal materials, namely liquid crystal elastomers (CLE) and liquid crystal gels (CLG). These novel materials are soft and solid rubbers with orientationally ordered constituents with coupling between orientational order and mechanical strain. This coupling of orientation with mechanical strain would allow the softness of liquid crystalline materials to be experienced and exploited in exciting new ways such as creation of 'rubber lasers' which would change color on stretching, while shining light on LCE samples can cause them "to bend, fold, and swim away from the light." The unparalleled responsivity of these materials has almost universal appeal, and there is enormous demand for samples even in the applied mathematics community. The planned facility will focus on producing LCEs and LCGs, their characterization, and distribution of these materials to interested scientists in academia, governmental labs and industry. The establishment of a center of excellence with international leadership in Liquid Crystal Facility would be building on existing strengths, and would provide an important bridge between the scientists who are synthesizing materials and who are studying and using these materials for devices and applications. Training graduate students and scientists in this area will add significantly to the work force in the area of liquid crystalline elastomers and gels. The Center will establish a strong cadre of workers in the US studying and developing these materials, something that is absent now. In addition, graduate students would accumulate training as a spin-off of working on samples so that the techniques can be more widely distributed in the US, both to academia and to industry.