Antal Jakli
Kent State University at Kent, OH·Materials Science
Some materials produce an electric field all by themselves, with no battery attached, much as a piece of iron can be magnetic without any magnet nearby. Materials like this are called ferroelectric, and until recently they were known only as solids: crystals, plastics, or liquid crystals with an orderly stacking of layers.
- Fields
Materials Science
Physics
Chemistry
- Topics
ferroelectric nematic
liquid crystals
electromechanical coupling
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Measure how linear electromechanical coupling in ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, the conversion between applied voltage and mechanical deformation, depends on the magnitude of spontaneous polarization and on nanoscale structure.
- Determine the elastic and electrical properties of these fluids through flexoelectricity studies, the voltage generated when the liquid crystal is bent, and establish how ferroelectricity modifies flexoelectric response.
- Synthesize an expanding library of ferroelectric nematic compounds with optimized properties, enabling systematic variation of molecular structure against measured polarization, dielectric constants, elastic constants, and orientational viscosities.
- Characterize collective molecular fluctuations and intermolecular correlations to test models predicting spatial modulation of polarization direction, and to identify the nature of transitions between antiferroelectric, ferroelectric, and modulated polar nematic phases.
More about the research
A newly discovered state, the ferroelectric nematic phase, combines that built-in electric polarization with the fluidity of a liquid. Because the material flows, a modest voltage can reorient its internal electric direction, and because electric orientation and mechanical shape are linked, voltage can produce motion and motion can produce voltage.
Why it matters
Fluids that convert voltage into motion, and motion into voltage, at low driving voltages are attractive for soft robotics, where flexible actuators replace rigid motors, and for harvesting electricity from mechanical movement. Measuring the polarization, elastic, and viscous properties of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals and explaining their electromechanical response could show which molecular designs are worth pursuing for such motion-control and energy-conversion uses.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Michael Fisch
Kent State University at Kent, OH·Physics
Synthesize new bent-core, bimesogen and twisted-core mesogens designed to form the recently discovered twist-bend, splay-bend, splay and ferroelectric nematic phases.
Nuris Figueroa-Morales
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Physics·Early-career
Derive a slender body theory, a model of thin moving filaments, for a single bacterial flagellum in a nematic liquid crystal, and test it with experiments and simulations of the Ericksen-Leslie and Beris-Edwards fluid models.
Pradeep Sharma
University of Houston, TX·Engineering
Model how strain, strain gradients, anisotropy and flexoelectricity (bending-induced electric charge) change superconductivity, by linking continuum mechanics to a quantum order parameter, to find ways to raise critical temperature and current.
The school
Kent State University at Kent: 6 labs on PI Pages, $61M a year on research, 162 research doctorates a year.
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