Impressions from ECIS 2017 - day 2

Highlights from the morning session of the second day. I managed to miss Jacob Klein's plenary talk (on Interfacial water).

Parallel session on topics 5 and 6 (roughly, inorganic colloids)

• Andrés Guerrero-Martínez (Madrid University) on the reshaping, fragmetation and welding of gold nanoparticles using femtosecond lasers.
• Two more talks on responsive Au@polymer systems: Jonas Schubert (Dresden University) and Rafael Contreras-Cáceres (Málaga University)
• Pavel Yazhgur (postdoc at the ESPCI, Paris after a remarkable PhD at the LPS, Orsay!) on hyperuniform binary mixtures. I should write a post on hyperuniformity at some point...

Parallel session on topic 3 (polymers, liquid crystals and gels)

• Hans Juergen Butt on the crystallization of polymers or water in alumina pores.

Impressions from ECIS 2017

I'm in Madrid for the 31st conference of the European Colloid and Interface Society. Here are some highlights from the morning session:

Michael Cates on active colloids (plenary session)

I arrived late and missed some of this talk, plus I'm not a specialist in the area of active colloids. What I found interesting is the search for the minimal modification of the various Hohenberg-Halperin models (B and H) that yield interesting behaviour; I still haven't understood how breaking the time-reversal symmetry comes into play. Here is a reference I promised myself I would read on the flight back home.

Parallel session on topics 5 and 6 (roughly, inorganic colloids)

Two talks on secondary structures in gold nanoparticle systems with potential applications to SERS:

• Christian Kuttner (Dresden University) discussed the protein-mediated formation of raspberry-shaped gold clusters consisting of small particles adsorbed onto larger ones. Nice SAXS measurements reveal the presence of both particle populations.
• Joachim Koetz (Potsdam University) presented the growth of small (hemi)spherical gold clusters on triangular gold nanosheets. Several notable publications, on the synthesis of the platelets (followed by time-resolved SAXS), on their surface deposition for catalysis and detection applications and on the study of their vibrational modes using ultrafast X-ray diffraction (in collaboration with the group of Matias Bargheer.)

Two other talks focused on magnetic nanoparticles:

• Laura Rossi (Utrecht University) on the self-assembly of hematite cubes (paper not yet published).
• Golnaz Isapour (Fribourg University, in the group of Marco Lattuada) on color-changing materials based on responsive polymers (pNIPAM for temperature and PVP for pH).

Aside from the nice work, the last talk also references a paper on Color change in chameleons, from which I learned that structures that generate structural colors are called iridophores (great name!), in contrast with the pigment-bearing chromatophores. I have already written about structural colors on this blog.

ILCC2014: days four and five

The plenary lectures of these last two days were given by chemists (Carsten Tschierske and Tadashi Kato) and they were both impressive for the results but also for the huge amount of work these clearly required.

Overall, I think the scientific level was higher than two years ago, maybe because of the smaller number of oral presentations: there were only three parallel sessions (four on Tuesday) compared to five in Mainz. Finally, the next (26th) edition of the ILCC will take place at Kent State!

ILCC2014: day three

Not too much science today, so I finally got to see the Book of Kells:

Like any respectable paper, the exhibition even has a "Materials and Methods" section!

In the afternoon, tour of the Guinness storehouse, one of the few places in Dublin where gravity points upwards.

ILCC 2014: day two

Not too many events today (at least in the sessions I attended). Two highlights:

•  Very nice talk by Sin-Doo Lee about surface patterning using micron-sized nanoparticles
• I wasn't there, but it seems that Ivan Dozov's talk on twist-bend nematics was very appreciated (and led to lively discussion afterwards.)

ILCC 2014: day one

The 25th International Liquid Crystal Conference (ILCC 2014) opened today at the Trinity College Dublin. There are over 600 participants (only 24 of them from France). The organization seems a bit less meticulous than two years ago in Mainz, but the food is definitely better!

On the scientific side, modulated nematics (such as the twist-bend phase) are clearly the hot topic. There are also many talks on nanocomposites. Geographically, the Ljubljana groups (both at the University and the Jožef Stefan Institute) are very strong, and their collaborations with the Boulder teams of Noel Clark and Ivan Smalyukh look very fruitful, after Slobodan Žumer's talk this afternoon.