Research direction

      The concept of "soft matter" was first proposed by P. Gennes in his Nobel Prize Speech in 1991. It describes materials between liquid and ideal solid, such as colloids, foams, liquid crystals, gels, polymers, active substances, etc. its functional assembly is spontaneous and can sensitively sense a variety of external stimuli. Liquid crystal is a typical soft material, which has both the fluidity of liquid and the anisotropy of crystal. In the past half century, liquid crystal materials and technology have developed rapidly, and have become the mainstream flat panel display technology, which has entered thousands of households. There are abundant phase states in liquid crystals, including nematic phase, smectic phase, cholesteric phase, blue phase, etc., which have unique physical properties and controllable directional/positional ordering, and can construct a variety of micro nano structures through molecular self-assembly. Today, the scope of liquid crystal research is not limited to display, and has become an important research topic in the frontier and interdisciplinary field. It plays an indispensable role in optical communication, metauniverse, micro nano machinery, energy conversion, life and health, space technology, etc.
      The center is committed to the research of soft material materials represented by liquid crystal and their interaction with light. It has been working for more than ten years, and has made important progress in the integrated design and whole chain innovation from material effect structure device application. Starting from the unique physical properties of liquid crystal materials and the development trend of optical components, combined with the "top-down" structural induced orientation and the "bottom-up" molecular layer self-assembly, this paper systematically studies how to construct one-dimensional, two-dimensional and even three-dimensional micro nano structures and topological structures in soft materials such as liquid crystal. The structure-activity relationship between the structure of liquid crystal soft matter and optical parameters was studied. Based on this, an ultra thin, active, multi-dimensional light field control element is developed, which can realize the high-efficiency, multi-dimensional generation, control and detection of light field in different bands from visible to terahertz, and can be used in communication, sensing, imaging, computing and other fields. In addition, biomass soft materials such as silk protein and cellulose will also provide a new way for the development of green, bio compatible, implantable and stretchable soft matter optical platforms.
       So far, more than 100 high-level papers have been published, and many papers have been selected into ESI high cited and hot papers, which have been positively cited and evaluated by peers and widely reported by academic media. The achievements have successively won the "top ten developments in Chinas optics" in 2018 and 2019, and won the first prize of the science and Technology Award (NATURAL SCIENCE) of the Chinese Academy of optical engineering in 2023. The postgraduates cultivated by the center have won the excellent youth of the Foundation Committee, the Youbo of the China Optical Society, the wangdaheng optical award, the Jiangsu Youbo, the provincial gold award and the National Silver Award in the Internet College Students innovation and entrepreneurship competition. In terms of application of achievements, members of the center led the creation of the Nanjing Nanhui intelligent optical sensing and Control Research Institute platform, and incubated Nanjing jingcui Optical Technology Co., Ltd. to organize professional teams to promote the achievement transformation of liquid crystal planar optical elements, serve Huawei, BOE, 504 institutes, goer and other scientific research institutes and leading enterprises, and apply liquid crystal microstructure elements to optical communication, lidar, laser control and other practical applications.
      In short, the center has distinctive research characteristics, wide academic influence and clear application prospects in liquid crystal and soft matter photonics, and has made important contributions to the development of physics, optics and optoelectronics, information science and other disciplines and the progress of optoelectronic instruments. In the future, we will continue to promote the basic concepts, cutting-edge applications and development prospects of soft matter photonics based on liquid crystal and other materials, open up a valuable new path for liquid crystal non display applications, constantly enrich the scientific research connotation of soft matter, and promote the development and reform of a new generation of Information Photonics Technology, which has significant academic value and positive social significance.