Office Location:
Searle Laboratory 428 5735 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637
Ye Zhou is from Zhoushan, China. In 2011, she got a BS in chemistry from Peking University. During her undergraduate studies, she joined Professor Jian Pei's Research Lab of Molecular Materials and Polymers. After that, she spent two years in Paris, France, and got her MS from Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles(ESPCI). In her second year at ESPCI, she did a six-month internship for Rhodia/Solvay at the Complex Assemblies of Soft Matter Laboratory in Bristol, Pennsylvania. In 2013, she entered the Chemistry Department at the University of Chicago. She will soon be a PhD candidate in chemistry.
Liquid crystals (LCs) are materials with properties between those of conventional liquids and those of conventional solids. Their impact on modern technology is significant.
Zhou mainly focuses on simulation approaches based on continuum models. In the following years, there are three directions that she would like to explore. The first is to investigate the behavior of chiral LC droplets under the influence of interfacial perturbations (the inclusion of particles, for example), and how this will lead to morphological transitions at longer scales. The second is to explore the blue phases trapped inside chiral LC droplets and their potential applications. A third goal is to develop new methods to simulate the behavior of polymeric LCs in confined geometries and their response to interfacial cues.
Li, Xiao, et al. "Perfection in Nucleation and Growth of Blue-Phase Single Crystals: Small Free-Energy Required to Self-Assemble at Specific Lattice Orientation." ACS applied materials & interfaces 11.9 (2019): 9487-9495.
Sleczkowski, Piotr, et al. "Light-activated helical inversion in cholesteric liquid crystal microdroplets." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.17 (2018): 4334-4339.
Bukusoglu, Emre, et al. "Strain-induced alignment and phase behavior of blue phase liquid crystals confined to thin films." Soft matter 13.47 (2017): 8999-9006.
Li, Xiao, et al. "Mesoscale martensitic transformation in single crystals of topological defects." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114.38 (2017): 10011-10016.
Ramezani-Dakhel, Hadi, et al. "Understanding Atomic-Scale Behavior of Liquid Crystals at Aqueous Interfaces." Journal of chemical theory and computation 13.1 (2016): 237-244.
