Vimala Sridurai

Vimala Sridurai
Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences · Department of Physics

Doctor of Philosophy
Working on Soft Photonic crystals & Optical metamaterials Looking for postdoctoral openings in relevant research areas

About

24
Publications
3,945
Reads
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479
Citations
Introduction
Postdoctoral researcher with • Ability to conceptualize research problems in emerging areas • PhD in soft condensed matter, liquid crystals. • Three years of postdoc experience in soft photonic crystals and optical metamaterials. • Explored and gained experience in a new field of research after my PhD. • Expertise in experimental and theoretical aspects of optical metamaterials & nano-photonics. • Enjoy working as a team yet independently carrying out research
Additional affiliations
August 2019 - present
Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences
Position
  • Research Associate
Description
  • Planning and executing research projects (experimental and theoretical) independently with suggestions from the research supervisor. Guiding PhD students in their research work.
July 2018 - August 2019
Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences
Position
  • Research Personnel
Description
  • Proposing new research Projects. Planning and executing research projects (experimental and theoretical) independently with suggestions from the research supervisor. Guiding PhD students in their research work.
January 2018 - June 2018
Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences
Position
  • Research Associate
Description
  • Widen the knowledge in the field of PhD work, i.e. liquid crystal gels and soft photonic crystals. Identify a new research field to work on, post-PhD. i.e. Optical metamaterials. Developing a strong fundamental knowledge base in both experimental and theoretical techniques to work on optical metamaterials.
Education
July 2009 - May 2011
PSG College of Technology
Field of study
  • Materials Science
July 2006 - May 2009

Publications

Publications (24)
Article
Physical gelation of liquid crystals (LCs), brought about by noncovalent interactions, is known to play a significant role in enhancing the mechanical as well as electro-optical properties of the LC phases. The present study investigates the effect of surface-functionalized quantum dots (QDs) on the mechanical properties of the amorphous blue phase...
Article
Three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals with complete photonic band gap (PBG) are fascinating due to the possibility of controlling light in all directions. Realizing such photonic crystals is nontrivial due to symmetry requirements and associated fabrication challenges. Liquid crystalline cubic blue phases (BPs) are soft 3D photonic crystals with...
Article
Amorphous Blue phase, or BPIII, a mesophase exhibited by highly chiral liquid crystals, is increasingly being investigated for next-generation displays due to its attractive electro-optical properties such as sub-millisecond response...
Article
We report on the interplay between viscosity at bulk and molecular levels in a nematic liquid crystal gel. Concentration dependence of the thermal, visco-elastic, and electro-optic properties is studied extensively on a composite prepared from a nematic liquid crystal host and a simple organogelator. The calorimetric and rheological measurements di...
Article
Existing liquid crystal (LC) smart window technologies are yet to make inroads into the consumer market largely due to more than 50% of the cost-share of the tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) layer used as the transparent conducting electrode (TCE). In this work, we demonstrate the deployment of a low-cost hybrid TCE as a pathbreaking alternative to ITO...
Article
We report studies on a colloidal metamaterial system in which sub-micron-sized (~530 nm) dielectric particles (SiO2) are dispersed in a nematic liquid crystal. Despite the low refractive index (~1.45) of the particles, Mie resonances are enhanced in the system due to the anisotropic nature of the host medium, as evident from the UV–Vis extinction s...
Article
Full-text available
Dynamic tuning of electromagnetic response is an important parameter to realize exotic applications of optical metamaterials. Self-assembly achieved via the incorporation of soft materials is an attractive approach to achieve tunable optical properties. Among the soft materials, liquid crystals are highly sought after due to the inherent soft-stimu...
Article
We report the growth of monodomain blue phase liquid crystal and its thermal stability on reduced graphene oxide-grown quartz substrates using optical reflection microscopy and spectroscopy. Optical textural images show that the graphene substrate enhances the thermal range of the blue phase by a factor of four compared to conventional ITO-coated g...
Article
Full-text available
A colloidal metamaterial composite, realized by dispersing sub‐micrometer‐sized high refractive index dielectric resonators (selenium) in a nematic liquid crystal medium, exhibits electrically tunable Mie resonances in the optical regime. Darkfield hyperspectral imaging reveals that when the nematic liquid crystal (NLC) molecules reorient from the...
Article
We report studies on the Frank elastic constant behaviour of a liquid crystal gel system exhibiting the twist bend nematic (Ntb) phase. Physical gelation is observed to ease the splay and stabilize the twist deformations in the nematic phase preceding the Ntb. More importantly, the ultra-low bend elastic constant (K33) of the system is enhanced by...
Article
Blue phase liquid crystals are soft 3D photonic crystals in which the liquid crystal molecules self-assemble to form a cubic structure with lattice spacing of a few hundred nanometers resulting in selective reflection of colours in the visible spectrum. The corresponding wavelength or the ‘photonic band gap’ can be tuned using various external stim...
Article
The development of stimuli-responsive materials capable of transducing external stimuli into mechanical and physical changes has always been an intriguing challenge and an inspiration for scientists. Several stimuli-responsive gels have been developed and applied to biomimetic actuators or artificial muscles. Redox active actuators in which the mec...
Article
Full-text available
A soft photoluminescent composite, prepared using a nematic liquid crystal and a fluorescent gelator, exhibits nearly two orders of magnitude increase in fluorescence on addition of superparamagnetic nanoparticles. The internal magnetic field generated leading to an increase in the population of singlet excitons which affects the radiative efficien...
Article
We report a robust soft photonic crystal system, fabricated using blue phase (BP) liquid crystal, which can efficiently filter visible light. The BP gel system is obtained without surface treatment or polymerization and thus is facile and cost effective to fabricate. Perfect monodomain with vivid colour is achieved with a low electric field, which...
Article
Morphology influences the functionality of covalent organic networks and determines potential applica-tions. Here, we report for the first time the use of Zincke reaction to fabricate, under either solvothermal or microwave conditions, a viologen-linked covalent organic network in the form of hollow particles or nanosheets. The synthesized material...
Article
We report the effect of photo-isomerisation on physical gelation in a soft nematic organogel. The gel is obtained by the addition of a low molecular weight organogelator and a photo-active azobenzene based compound to a nematic liquid crystal. The UV-induced photo-isomerization is seen to have a substantial influence on the gelation process, as exe...
Article
Composites of calamitic and bent-core nematic molecules exhibiting a nematic to nematic-gel transformation have been investigated using thermal, electrical, Xray and mechanical probes. The studies focusing on the Frank elastic behaviour show a surprising result that the thermal behaviour of the threshold voltage and the dependent splay elastic cons...
Conference Paper
We report results of dielectric, rheological, electrical switching measurements and AFM studies on a chiral mixture with a large spontaneous polarization, and its composites with a simple organogelator. The results indicate that large changes seen in the relaxation parameters of the collective dielectric relaxations, as well as the spontaneous pola...
Article
We have studied composites of a ferroelectric liquid crystal mixture with a simple organic gelating agent, employing structural, thermal, electrical and mechanical probes, investigating the influence of the coupling between the polarization and the tilt angle on the ferroelectric properties of smectic gels. The calorimetric data, presenting clear s...

Questions

Question (1)
Question
In general in a nematic liquid crystal as temperature is decreased, the order parameter and the viscosity increases and thereby the bend elastic constant also increases.
So, what would such an oppsite behaviour (K3 being negative) mean in terms of the molecular arragement of the phase?... 

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