Rahul Kanti Nath, featured ILCC liquid crystal artist, November 2012



Dr. Rahul Kanti Nath is presently a
Rahul
Post Graduate Teacher at KHS School. His Ph.D Research under the guidance of Prof. N V S Rao at the Assam University, Silchar, India was directed towards the synthesis and optical properties of nonlinear shaped liquid crystals especially 4-ring unsymmetrical hockey stick compounds. These materials are borderline between calamitic and banana shaped liquid crystals having unusual physical and optical properties. His present research interest is on design and synthesis of nonlinear shaped liquid crystals with novel molecular architecture.
Iso-Col
Present optical texture shows dendritic growth of the banana B1 phase separating from the isotropic melt of a fluoro-substituted four ring hockey stick shaped compound sandwiched between a 5.0 μm homogeneous cell. On slow cooling the isotropic melt of the compound, B1 phase grows as dendritic nuclei which coalesce into a typical mosaic texture with large domains of uniform birefringence characterising the phase as columnar. The texture was taken using Nikon NIS elements attached with the polarizing microscope (Nikon LV-100 eclipse) attached with Instec STC200 temperature controller.


Jury comment: liquid crystal rain