The ALCEMISTs from NOVA published an invited Perspective paper highlighting the emerging potential of solvent-free thermotropic cellulose liquid crystals as sustainable photonic materials by connecting molecular chirality, hierarchical self-assembly, processing, and optical functionality. Its main novelty is providing an integrated framework for understanding and designing adaptive cellulose-based photonic systems, directly supporting ALCEMIST's objective of establishing predictive design principles for renewable structural colour materials.

The paper, titled Cellulose-based self-assembled photonic structures: linking chirality, structure and optical function across scales, is published (open access) in Journal of Physics: Photonics, 8, 021001, 2026. Please click here to to read it.

The ESMP group hosted the 2026 German Liquid Crystal Conference (GLCC 2026) on the Belval campus of University of Luxembourg, 8-10th of April 2026. As it followed on our first ALCEMIST workshop most team members were present also at the conference, showcasing the project in several ways. Jan Lagerwall was the chair and main organizer of the conference, Lena Godinho was one of the invited speakers and also represented southern Europe as well as the International Liquid Crystal Society during a panel discussion on future directions for liquid crystal research in Europe, and Eugene gave the laudatio to Prof. Rudolf Zentel at the ceremony where Rudolf received the Saupe medal from the German Liquid Crystal Society.






As icing on the cake, Miriam and Tatiana were awarded a best poster prize for their work on shear-aligned large-scale liquid crystal elastomer actuator sheets. And everyone participated in the organization, discussions and in ensuring a good atmosphere and a successful meeting in general.

Tags: meeting

On 7th of April 2026, the first ALCEMIST workshop took place, this time gathering the entire team (except one PhD student who unfortunately fell ill). The workshop was organized in Luxembourg, this time on the new Belval campus of the University of Luxembourg, as we took advantage of the fact that the ESMP group was organizing the German Liquid Crystal Conference 2026 (GLCC) on the same campus, 8-10th of April, allowing ALCEMIST to be showcased also at the conference (where one example of ALCEMIST research won a best poster prize).


At the workshop we presented the recent advances in all three scientific work packages. As highlights we may mention:

• WP 1: The Nova team perfected their method to synthesize butyrate hydroxypropylcellulose (BPC) and can now provide all team members with tens of grams each. The BPC can easily be shear-aligned for uniform non-helical arrangement and the team also demonstrated a method for getting uniform structural color from BPC films across 100 square cm areas and showed that the color can be tuned across the full visible spectrum.
  
• WP 1: The Cambridge team showed revealing experiments with mesogen-functionalized styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS), demonstrating a new understanding of the subtle microphase dynamics that are key for the function of this recyclable LCE. They also demonstrated different ways of crosslinking BPC films as well as cholesteric hydrogels with mechanochromic responsive color.
• WP 2–3: The Luxembourg team showed their recent success in upscaling the spinning of cylindrical CLCE fibers with mechanochromic response into a fully continuous process, allowing fibers of arbitrary length. They also showed recent results from their collaboration with a fashion designer in knitting mechanochromic garments using the fibers.
• WP 2–3: The Luxembourg team also showed a proof of concept of flow-processing LCE precursors for patterning topological defects into the director field. They demonstrated a 10 cm diameter and ~1 mm thick circular LCE with four tangential +1 defects which delivers cm-scale actuation upon heating. This work also garnered the best poster prize at the GLCC where it was showcased for the first time to a broader audience.

At the meeting we had the pleasure to host two specially invited guests and collaborators of the ALCEMIST project, Prof. Apala Majumdar from University of Manchester, UK, and Med. Dr. Attila Dubecz from the Heliosklinikum Erfurt, Germany. Apala is an applied mathematician who is supporting ALCEMIST with developing analytical models for analyzing complex flow behavior in liquid crystal elastomer precursors, and Attila is a surgeon specializing in robotic surgery, together with whom we are developing our mechanochromic CLCE fibers to be used as suture threads in order to give robotic surgeons feedback on tension during suturing. The presentations by Apala and Attila and the discussions with them throughout the day were truly enriching for the meeting and for the whole ALCEMIST team.




The workshop was wrapped up with a dinner for all participants during which the lively discussions continued.

Tags: meeting, workshop

ALCEMIST team members Zornitza Tosheva and Jan Lagerwall (both of the ESMP group in Luxembourg) published a very thorough study that has been a long time in the making, demonstrating how the generation of shear-induced nematic phase during ultrasonication of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) suspensions greatly improves the results of the sonication. This means that the concentration of nanoparticles during sonication, which frequently is an almost ignored parameter, plays a huge role, and this applies also to other anisometric nanoparticles, like carbon nanotubes, graphene flakes and so on.

The paper, titled Orientational ordering benefits nanorod sonication, is published (open access) in Physical Review Materials. You can read it here. And here is a Linked In post introducing the paper for a broader scientific audience.

Tags: CNC

Jan was invited by ACS Accounts of Materials Research to write a perspective article which he chose to devote to cholesteric liquid crystals and their broad application opportunities. One of the featured examples are the mechanochromic CLCE fibers that play a key role in WP3 of ALCEMIST, specifically the quest to turn these into suture threads that will help robotic surgeons understand how hard they tie the suture, so they don't break them during surgery.

You can download the open access article, titled Innovative Applications Enabled by the Versatile Structural Color of Cholesteric Liquid Crystals, from the ACS AMR website.

Tags: CLCEs

In collaboration with French and US researchers, the NOVA team published an article in Soft Matter titled A skyrmionic topology perspective on Lehmann clusters. The paper shows that in cholesteric liquid crystals, defects that would normally annihilate can instead form stable bound structures through three-dimensional reorientation of the director field, revealing a topology-governed mechanism for robust, long-lived defect states. Such defect stabilisation provides key insight into how stress- and flow-driven director reconfiguration can be controlled. This control over defect dynamics is crucial for the programmable patterning of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) using complex director-field architectures.

Download the (open access) article here.

The NOVA group published an article in Advanced Optical Materials titled Hierarchical Twist: Chirality Across Scales in Cellulose Cholesterics, addressing the chirality of cellulose liquid crystalline phases to gain a deeper understanding of their structural organisation and properties. Revealing the complex self-assembly of cellulose and understanding the behaviour of its chiral organisation are crucial for the preparation of cellulose-based liquid crystalline elastomers.
You can download the article (open access) here.

On 13th of June we had a small kick-off meeting for ALCEMIST, although we were still in the process of recruiting the last team members. We had the pleasure of having innovative textile artist Chloe Bensahel visiting us, sharing some of her beautiful work with responsive textiles, responding to touch with sound, light and color changes. Truly inspiring for the ALCEMIST team as we are developing textile fibers that inherently change color or shape upon the right stimuli. We will continue working together as the ALCEMIST materials get more mature.

Tags: meeting

While not a result of ALCEMIST, Jan's latest paper, together with chemist Rijeesh Kizhakidathazath and concrete engineers Tarik Čamo and Danièle Waldmann-Diederich, on using CLCEs in structural health monitoring is strongly related to the project. The paper demonstrates how the same mechanochromic response of CLCEs that will be used in strain sensing fibers in ALCEMIST can be used to detect and monitor cracks in concrete. By painting the CLCE precursor onto the object of interest, a crack developing in it is immediately revealed—much earlier than when it could be seen by the naked eye—through a local color change over the crack. This can have a great impact on detecting structural problems in bridges and other infrastructure before they fail, thus avoiding costly repairs and possibly saving lives. Read the paper that was published (open access) in the journal Structural Health Monitoring here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14759217241296831

Tags: CLCEs

We are thrilled about the strong and positive response we have had about ALCEMIST since it was announced and we are happy to see many already contacting us about opportunities for working together, in different ways. We ask for a bit more patience, as the management framework for a Synergy project, involving three different universities in three different European countries, is quite complex. We are working hard to get the framework set up, and as soon as this is done we will start recruiting the project team and engaging in the right collaborations.

The very first incarnation of our website is live. To be continued.