Researchers generated stable vortex light in its lowest-energy state using liquid crystal traps and optical confinement.

Liquid crystals are condensed-matter systems that exhibit phases with orientational order of constituent anisotropic molecules while retaining partial fluidity characteristic of liquids. Depending on ...

Tanmay Bharat is the 2021 Eppendorf Young European Investigator. He works in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford, studying the structures of prokaryotic cell surface ...

With their ability to shapeshift and manipulate delicate objects, soft robots could work as medical implants, deliver drugs ...

US engineers develop soft robots that move without motors using liquid crystal elastomers and embedded electronics.

A drop of liquid crystal turns a polymer structure into an all-optical basis for logic ...

The direction in which the electromagnetic field of circularly polarized light rotates can be easily reversed by applying a voltage, RIKEN researchers have demonstrated. This could enable a new ...

A printable polymer that traps water molecules flips humidity from a performance-killer into a performance-booster for motion ...

Hundreds of years ago, lead musket balls tore across European battlefields, littering the ground with toxic materials. Today, a team of scientists in Germany has scavenged a pile of this deeply ...

Rhodium is one of the most powerful catalytic metals known to chemistry. Small amounts of it can drive reactions that produce ...

For decades scientists have thought, based on experimental observations, that the lower a glassy material’s melting rate, the ...