Rafaela R. da Rosa, featured ILCC liquid crystal artist, May 2018

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Rafaela R. da Rosa is a graduate student at LaSOMI lab in Chemistry Institute at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, under supervison of Prof. Dr. Aloir A. Merlo. During five months last year she worked as part of SMRC group at CU Boulder under Prof. Dr. David M. Walba's supervision.

She works with organic synthesis using Isoxazolines and Isoxazoles as a template for preparation of new liquid crystalline compounds. During her Master's she synthesized a collection of new isoxazoles showing high ordered smectic phases. In her current Ph.D. project she is preparing new bent-core liquid crystals composed of Isoxazoline and Isoxazole rings in collaboration with the undergraduate student Caroline S. B. Weber.

Her main focus is design and synthesize new polar smectic liquid crystals and evaluate the influence of the heterocycle rings in the mesomorphic behavior of new banana LC. The picture shows the B7 phase of one of these brand new compounds prepared by Weber containing the Isoxazole ring, which is going to be presented at ILCC 2018. The sample was analyzed by PLOM using 50x of magnification at 220°C after slow cooling from the isotropic phase in a 3um planar align cell with anti-parallel rubbing. The scale bar is shown in the picture.

e-mail address: rafaela.raupp(at)ufrgs.br

Rafaela Raupp da Rosa CV
Research Gate profile
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A bent-core liquid crystal with no lateral groups composed of the heterocycle isoxazole showed this amazing B7 texture. The picture was taken at 220°C. The texture was obtained after the slow cooling from the isotropic phase. This work is going to be presented in the ILCC2018 in Kyoto.
Jury comment: The artwork is a marvellous composition of fine intricate textural elements with very rich contrast.