Chiral nematic liquid crystal laser droplets

This video shows the formation of droplets of dye-doped chiral nematic liquid crystal material in an aqueous carrier solution. The droplets are formed using a microfluidic T-junction of 100 micrometres depth. When static, and with optical pumping, these droplets emit laser light and were used in experiments to investigate the effect of changing the droplet geometry on the emission properties. Further details are given in the accompanying text file.

Normand, Margaret; Englezopoulos, Konstantinos; Pawsey, Anne; Hands, Philip. (2017). Chiral nematic liquid crystal laser droplets, [moving image]. University of Edinburgh. School of Engineering. Institute of Integrated Micro and Nano Systems. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/1988.