Speaking in the session on Graphene and Emerging 2D Materials for Photonics Applications in Coventry, UK, last month, Anna Baldycheva of the University of Exeter, UK, claimed that the discovery of 2D materials has prompted a renaissance in the area of liquid crystals. One technique that has been made possible by the reinvigoration of this field was the subject of Baldycheva’s presentation: the integration of microfluidic channel-hosted dispersions of 2D materials with silicon wafer-based photonic devices.