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We investigated two ionic liquid crystals by means of optical microscopy, X-ray, and fast field-cycling NMR relaxometry. The LC solutions were found to form foams, which produce some beautiful images.

These inspired the cover image of the journal issue. Link to the Article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c02059

Colleagues from Condensed Matter Physics Department, Marta Lavrič, George Cordoyiannis in Nikola Novak, in collaboration with groups from University of Ljubljana (L. Bar, A. Iglič) and Université Libre de Bruxelles Bruslju (M. E. Villanueva, P. Losada-Pérez), have published an article in the journal Sensors, entitled “Quality assessment of solvent-assisted lipid bilayers in different phases and aqueous buffer media: A QCM-D study” (https://doi.org/10.3390/s24186093). By means of quartz microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D), they have measured the adsorbed lipid mass in real-time, through changes in frequency and dissipation. They have demonstrated how different experimental parameters (aqueous buffers, and adsorption at temperatures corresponding to the fluid or gel phases) affect the quality of supported lipid bilayers, formed by the solvent-exchange method on Au and SiO₂ surfaces. This time-efficient method for forming supported lipid bilayers is recently receiving increasing attention among scientists. However, its dependence on different experimental conditions is not yet fully understood.