COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

Douglas Gin was awarded a long-term grant to host Raisa Talroze of the Topchiev Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Talroze spent a total of four months (March through May 1999, and July through August 1999) with the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Talroze worked with Gin on the interface between lightly cross-linked liquid crystal (LC) elastomers and heavily cross-linked liquid crystal networks by using chiral liquid crystal diacrylate monomers developed in Gin’s laboratory as chiral cross-linkers. During her time in the U.S., Talroze learned about functional LC monomer design and new applications of LC networks via the other projects (emissive LC monomers, lyotropic LC networks as membranes, catalysts, and nonocomposites) that Gin and his colleagues are pursuing. These are areas that she and her group have not traditionally worked in. Talroze and Gin plan on finishing the remaining aspects of this project over the next year or so in their respective laboratories. On her way home to Russia Talroze stopped off in New Orleans to present her work at the fall 1999 American Chemical Society conference. In addition, they have plans to start a new project developing hybrid functional LC systems and material using functional LC components unique to Talroze and Gin’s groups. One publication in the journal Liquid Crystals and a preprint have resulted from this collaborative effort.