Manoj Kumar Paul, featured ILCC liquid crystal artist, September 2012


ManojPaul
Manoj Kumar Paul is an Assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Assam University, India. His fascination toward the optical textures of liquid crystals developed when he joined for Ph.D. research on non-linear liquid crystals at Assam University, India. In 2009, he joined the research group of Prof. Cheng Cher Huang at University of Minnesota, USA as a BOYSCAST fellow and began work on investigation of optical properties of free standing liquid crystalline materials. His research interests is focus on synthesis of photochromic azo based bent core liquid crystals with novel molecular architecture and their structure- property relationship, synthesis of rare earth containing magnetic liquid crystals and ferro-and anti-ferroelectric liquid crystals. In addition to design and synthesis of liquid crystals, he is also interested in optical properties of free standing liquid crystalline films.

Sept2012
The four- ring bent core liquid crystals is regarded as hockey stick shaped molecules at the border between typical bent shaped five ring molecules and calamitic molecules, display unusual phase behavior. The optical image is a stripe pattern like texture of free standing film of four ring bent core liquid crystal under crossed polarizers. The free standing film was viewed with a 20x objective using a Nikon LV100 POL polarizing optical microscope with Nikon D300 digital camera.

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