A novel nanocomposite device, which consists of liquid crystals and semiconductor nanorods, has been designed and fabricated. It reveals a very unique and useful behavior in that the polarization of the emission from semiconductor nanorods can be controlled by an external bias. The large magnitude of polarization anisotropy of 0.63 can be quantitatively interpreted very well in terms of the dielectric contrast between semiconductor and liquid crystal. Our approach is quite general, which is applicable to other nanomaterials, and it utilizes the currently mature liquid crystal display technology. The results open up new possible applications for one-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures in smart optoelectronic applications, including optical switches, integrated photonic devices, as well as electrochromatic gadgets in the near future.

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If you have a laser cutter, you can build your own TOPAOKO. We describe work in progress on TOPAOKO, an interactive construction kit that encourages experimentation and play with pieces of a hardboard based, embedded circuit, kit. We describe each component of the kit and examples of constructions built with it. Figure 1. The TOPAOKO kit is made of laser cut hardboard embedded with circuit.

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