Liquid crystals already provide the basis for successful technologies like LCD displays, and researchers continue to create specific kinds of liquid crystals for even better optical devices and applications.

Juan de Pablo, Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago, and his team have now found a way to create and stabilize so-called "blue phase liquid crystals," which have the properties of both liquids and crystals, and can in some cases reflect better than ordinary liquid crystals.

The results, published in ACS Nano, could lead to new optical technologies with better response times.

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