Prof. Goran Ungar from School of Materials Science and Engineering at Xi'an Jiaotong University (also Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield) was invited to our institute to give an academic lecture, titled “Asymmetric liquids and liquid crystals of symmetric molecules on Jan” on April 1st. 

Prof. Goran Ungar from Xi'an Jiaotong University (also Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield) on lecture 

How L-amino acids dominate the biosphere and eradicate the competitive right-handed amino acids has been a long-standing discussion theme in evolutionary chemistry. In this talk, Professor Ungar discussed similar chirality selection phenomenon in the self-assembly of liquid crystal molecules. He first introduced that for some flexible molecules without an inherent chirality (e.g., a chiral center), chiral structure can grow in the crystallization process at microscale, and molecules with false conformations would simply be repelled to the surface of the crystal until the correct conformation is formed. “Does this rigorous choice also occur in liquid crystals formed by the self-assembly of symmetric molecules, or even in more disordered liquids?” The answer is ‘yes” in his latest research work. Professor Ungar showed that this special chiral choice was observed in a complex triple network phase. Among them, the nodes of the network structure play the critical role in controlling and correcting the distortion of achiral molecules and infinitely propagating to form a single chirality.

Lecture on live

Prof. Goran Ungar’s research group focuses on the structure and phase behavior study of liquid crystalline, supramolecular polymeric and low molecular systems, and semi-crystalline polymers, utilizing advanced instrumentation and analytical methods for x-ray and neutron scattering. Prof. Ungar's talk has deepened the academic discussion and inspired all the faculties and students the thinking about the research frontier of the soft matter structure.