Smalyukh

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards

Daniel Morton — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:21:31 +0000

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards Daniel Morton Fri, 08/07/2026 - 13:21

Daniel Morton

RASEI Fellow Ivan Smalyukh’s transparent heat-blocking material, MOCHI, just received top honors in the R&D World’s 2026 Special Recognition: Green Tech Category.

Buildings consume roughly 40% of the energy generated worldwide, much of it being lost through windows. Insulating walls is relatively easy, but insulating glass, while keeping it clear, is not. “Finding insulators that are transparent is really challenging,” explains Smalyukh.

MOCHI, the Mesoporous Optically Clear Heat Insulator, is a silicone gel built around a dense network of air pockets that are each many times thinner than a human hair. Because the pores are so small, gas molecules trapped inside them can’t collide and transfer hear in the way they normally do, they just bounce off the walls of the pockets. This means that the material blocks heat so effectively that a 5 mm (1/5 of an inch) sheet can let you hold a flame in your palm. The material transmits 99.5% of visible light, making it clearer than most glass. MOCHI reflects just 0.2% of incoming light, avoiding cloudiness associated with traditional aerogels. The material comes in slabs or thin sheets that could apply directly to existing windows.

Now in its 64^th year, the global science and innovation competition included an international panel of judges, bringing together more than 50 industry professionals. The judges ranked MOCHI gold among three Green Tech honorees, ahead of a carbon sequestering concrete block and solar reflecting cooling paint. All three winners also placed among the 2026 R&D 100 finalists.

This is the second major honor for the Smalyukh group’s push to develop practical transparent insulation technologies. In 2024 the team’s cellulose-based aerogel, SiCellA, earned a Guiness World Record for the most transparent material ever made.

MOCHI is still made by hand in the lab, but the team says that the ingredients are inexpensive and the process can be streamlined. Before it can be deployed in real windows, skylights, and even vehicle windshields, manufacturing needs to be scaled up, the next milestone on the development from lab bench to commercialization.

AUGUST 2026

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Reconfigurable self-assembly of porous anisotropic colloids in nematic liquid crystals

Daniel Morton — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:57:00 +0000

Reconfigurable self-assembly of porous anisotropic colloids in nematic liquid crystals Daniel Morton Mon, 02/02/2026 - 10:57

MATTER, 2026, 102563

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Multiscale geometrical and topological learning in the analysis of soft matter collective dynamics

Daniel Morton — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:53:07 +0000

Multiscale geometrical and topological learning in the analysis of soft matter collective dynamics Daniel Morton Fri, 01/09/2026 - 10:53

PHYSICAL REVIEW MATERIALS, 2026, 10, 015602

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Polariton Control of Molecular Charge Transfer in Perylene Diimide Semiconductors

Daniel Morton — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:22:26 +0000

Polariton Control of Molecular Charge Transfer in Perylene Diimide Semiconductors Daniel Morton Wed, 01/07/2026 - 17:22

THE JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS, 2026, ASAP

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Fusion and fission of particle-like chiral nematic vortex knots

Daniel Morton — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 18:53:44 +0000

Fusion and fission of particle-like chiral nematic vortex knots Daniel Morton Mon, 12/15/2025 - 11:53

NATURE PHYSICS, 2025

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Mesoporous optically clear heat insulators for sustainable building envelopes

Daniel Morton — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:15:09 +0000

Mesoporous optically clear heat insulators for sustainable building envelopes Daniel Morton Thu, 12/11/2025 - 17:15

SCIENCE, 2025, 390, 6778, 1171-1176

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New window insulation blocks heat, but not your view

Daniel Morton — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:24:44 +0000

New window insulation blocks heat, but not your view Daniel Morton Thu, 12/11/2025 - 09:24

Physicists at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, led by RASEI Fellow Ivan Smalyukh, have designed a new material for insulating windows that could improve the energy efficiency of buildings worldwide—and it works a bit like a high-tech version of Bubble Wrap.

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The team’s material, called Mesoporous Optically Clear Heat Insulator, or MOCHI, comes in large slabs or thin sheets that can be applied to the inside of any window. So far, the team only makes the material in the lab, and it’s not available for consumers. But the researchers say MOCHI is long-lasting and is almost completely transparent.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Today have put together a feature article that has been picked up by a number of other news outlets. Check out the feature and the follow ups with the links to the right.

December 2025

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Deterministic control of magnetotactic bacteria via an analysis of their nanomagnetic structure

Daniel Morton — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 16:15:38 +0000

Deterministic control of magnetotactic bacteria via an analysis of their nanomagnetic structure Daniel Morton Fri, 10/17/2025 - 10:15

PHYSICAL REVIEW E, 2025, 112, 044411
October 2025

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Liquid Crystals that Keep Time: Scientists Create Matter that Dances to Its Own Beat

Daniel Morton — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 19:29:45 +0000

Liquid Crystals that Keep Time: Scientists Create Matter that Dances to Its Own Beat Daniel Morton Fri, 09/05/2025 - 13:29

Adapted from an article run in ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Today by Daniel Strain

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A team led by RASEI Fellow Ivan Smalyukh has discovered a new type of liquid crystal that exists in perpetual, rhythmic motion, creating, for the first time, time crystals visible to the naked eye.

Reporting their findings in Nature Materials, the team demonstrates how liquid crystals, the same materials found in your phone display, can form a phase of matter that spontaneously breaks both space and time symmetries. Unlike previous time crystals that existed only in quantum systems invisible to the naked eye, these can be observed directly under a microscope.

The researchers designed special glass cells filled with liquid crystals and coated with light-sensitive dye molecules. When illuminated with blue light, something remarkable happens: like dancers following a lead, the liquid crystal molecules respond to cues from the dye molecules, creating an elaborate molecular waltz that repeats its steps over and over.

Here's how the molecular choreography works: The azobenzene dye molecules at the surface respond to light by rotating, which then guides neighboring liquid crystal molecules to reorient. This creates a feedback loop where the changing liquid crystal orientation affects how light polarizes as it passes through, which then influences more dye molecules at the bottom surface. The result is a self-sustaining temporal rhythm.

The researchers discovered that these time crystals are built from special molecular arrangements called ‘topological solitons’, think of it like stable whirlpools in a stream that maintain their shape while the water flows around them. These soliton "particles" interact with each other through the liquid crystal's elasticity, forming arrays that oscillate in time with remarkable precision.

What makes these time crystals remarkable is their resilience, similar to a heartbeat that continues despite disturbances, these patterns persist even when perturbed. The team demonstrated that the crystals maintain their rhythm when subjected to random light fluctuations and recover their ordered state after disruptions, meeting stringent criteria that distinguish true time crystals from simple periodic behavior.

The temporal periods can be tuned from milliseconds to tens of seconds by adjusting temperature and light intensity, while the spatial patterns can extend over areas larger than a square millimeter—making them easily visible and potentially practical for applications.

There are many potential applications, particularly in optoelectronics and security. The time crystals could serve as dynamic optical elements that modulate light in both space and time, enable new forms of optical communication, or provide sophisticated anti-counterfeiting features through their unique spatiotemporal "fingerprints." The ability to create 2+1 dimensional barcodes (two spatial dimensions plus time) could revolutionize information storage and encoding.

As is often found with breakthrough discoveries, the most transformative applications are likely yet to be imagined. But for now, scientists have created matter that literally keeps time.

September 2025

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Space-time crystals from particle-like topological solitons

Daniel Morton — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:50:13 +0000

Space-time crystals from particle-like topological solitons Daniel Morton Thu, 09/04/2025 - 16:50

NATURE MATERIALS, 2025, 24, 1802-1811

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Smalyukh

���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards

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Reconfigurable self-assembly of porous anisotropic colloids in nematic liquid crystals

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Multiscale geometrical and topological learning in the analysis of soft matter collective dynamics

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Polariton Control of Molecular Charge Transfer in Perylene Diimide Semiconductors

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Fusion and fission of particle-like chiral nematic vortex knots

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Mesoporous optically clear heat insulators for sustainable building envelopes

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New window insulation blocks heat, but not your view

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Deterministic control of magnetotactic bacteria via an analysis of their nanomagnetic structure

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Liquid Crystals that Keep Time: Scientists Create Matter that Dances to Its Own Beat

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Space-time crystals from particle-like topological solitons

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� “Frozen Air” window material wins gold in R&D 100 Green Tech Awards