A team of material scientists, chemical engineers and
physicists from the University of Pennsylvania has made another advance in
their effort to use liquid crystals as a medium for assembling structures.
In their earlier studies, the team produced patterns of
“defects,” useful disruptions in the repeating patterns found in liquid
crystals, in nanoscale grids and rings. The new study adds a more complex
pattern out of an even simpler template: a three-dimensional array in the shape
of a flower.