Random laser emission in a sphere-phase liquid crystal.

We investigated random lasing from a fluid self-assembly sphere-phase liquid crystal, which was composed of three-dimensional twist sphere structures with disclinations among them. The threshold energy of the random lasing from sphere-phase liquid crystal was 32% of that from the chiral nematic phase because of the interference associated with multiple scattering by randomly distributed sphere-phase platelets. Such random lasers composed of self-assembly soft organic materials may be useful for holographic displays, point-of-care biomedical analysis, and optical security coatings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]