PeroSeminar | 17 July 2025

Liquid crystals have secured their place as essential materials in LCD (liquid crystal display) technology. At the same time, due to their intrinsic anisotropy and ability to self-assemble into ordered phases, they also hold significant potential for a wide range of advanced applications. 
Among others, chiral liquid crystals – a unique class of liquid crystalline materials that spontaneously twist into helical molecular arrangements – stand out for their optical properties, including selective reflection of light and vivid structural colors subject to remarkable tunability. Such features make them especially attractive for photonic technologies.
In this talk, we explore the unique structural and optical properties of chiral liquid crystals, with a focus on their helical self-assembled architectures, which act as one-dimensional photonic crystals. Drawing on research from our laboratory, we demonstrate how these materials facilitate lasing and discuss their further developments for versatile optical elements of next-generation augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies.