The NLMCF website is designed to be convenient reference for information about LCE and other LC materials as well as complete guide for material synthesis and preparation. Information on the site is divided in four catergories, summarized in the below boxes, that are always accessible through the drop down menu at the top of the page.
General information about the NLCMF, material requests, people, people using materials prepared at the NLCMF, facility sponsors, and contact information are found in this section of the website.
A brief overview of what are liquid crystal elastomers and potential applications, LC material related research groups, select references, and multimedia clips of LCE are found in this section of the site.
Overview of LC materials detailed synthesis & material preparation procedures, material characterization techniques, procedures for equipment setup are found in this section. Procedures are very detailed, with hundreds of reference photographs. Procedures are available for download as MS Word files or Adobe pdf files. Word files contain spreadsheets to calculations to determine the required amount of material.
Student research is an essential part of the NLCMF. Under the guidance of the facility director Prof. Peter Palffy-Muhoray, students learn experiment design, material synthesis & preparation, and data analysis of LC materials. Summaries of their research are located viewable online organized by academic year.
The website makes extensive use of a variety of Java scripts for the menu and image galleries. Please allow these scripts to run to enjoy the full capabilities of the website. These scripts are used to run the drop down menu from Stu Nichols website (CSS Play) and the image gallery, using the amazing Highslide scripts written by Torstein Honsi. For certain images, clicking on it will cause it to expand, where it can be grapped and moved around the desktop. Additionally, multiple images can be opened at once. This is for people who wish to view the text and while viewing an enlarged image or for people using multipple monitors. If your browser becomes unresponsive after an image is opened, simply click on the reload button.