I was invited by Dr. Susanne Klein to give an invited talk at a topical meeting entitled "New frontiers in anisotropic fluid-particle composites" organized by the Royal Society in Chicheley Hall, Great Britain. My lecture, entitled "Topology and liquid crystal colloids" was very well accepted and the corresponding paper was published in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. We review and discuss recent progress in the field of nematic colloids, with an emphasis on possible future applications in photonics. The role of the topology is described, based on experimental manipulations of the topological defects in nematic colloids. The topology of the ordering field in nematics provides the forces between colloidal particles that are unique to these materials. We also discuss recent progress in the new field of active microphotonic devices based on liquid crystals (LCs), where chiral nematic microlasers and tuneable nematic microresonators are just two of the recently discovered examples. We conclude that the combination of topology and microphotonic devices based on LCs provides an interesting platform for future progress in the field of LCs.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 26602791I was invited to attend the international conference Photonics West, where I presented an invited paper entitled »Resonant transfer of light from a planar waveguide into a tunable nematic liquid crystal microcavity« within the conference sestion »Emerging Liquid Crystal Technologies VIII«. The lecture was accepted very well and I was also invited by Professor Ivan Smalyukh from the "Department of Physics " at University of Colorado at Boulder to present an invited lecture within the »Big Energy seminar series«. The lecture was entitled »Topological soft materials for all-optic low energy photonics« and I presented an overview of our recent work on photonic devices based on liquid crystals. The lecture was very well accepted.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 26699303I was invited by Professor Hiroshi Orihara from Hokkaido University, Japan, to attend an international symposium "International Symposium on Non-Equilibrium Soft Matter 2010" that was held in Nara, Japan. The subject of the meeting was cutting edge results from soft-matter phaysics, chemistry and application. Special emphasis was given to colloids, biophysics, statistical physics and liquid crystals. The meeting was attended by world-leading scientists. I presented our work in an invited lecture "Nematic Colloidal Crystals and Superstructures", which was accepted with great interest. This lecture was published in a special edition of Journal of Physics.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 24853031I was invited by Prof. Claudie Schmidt to attend an international meeting entitled "46th Biennial Meeting of the Colloid Society" which was organized by the University of Paderborn. I delivered a plenary lecture entitled "Topology and Self Assembly of Nematic Colloids", which gave an overview of our results on soft matter photonics. The lecture was very well accepted.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 26597671The invention is a spherical source of laser light including one or more droplets of chiral liquid crystals, with the addition of an active laser medium. Due to the chirality, the liquid crystals adopts a helical structure with a periodic variation of the dielectric tensor. The droplet is illuminated, so that an excess of the stimulated light over its loss is gained. The modulation of the refractive index causes a Bragg reflection of the light and the helical liquid crystalline structure functions as a radial Bragg reflector, thus forming an optical Bragg microresonator
F.33 Slovenian patent
COBISS.SI-ID: 25561639