ILCS

Golam Mohiuddin, UGC-MANF-Senior research fellow is a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, Assam University, Silchar under the guidance of Prof. Nandiraju V.S Rao. He obtained his B.Sc (2007) and M.Sc (2009) degrees from the Bolpur College, West Bengal, India and Assam University, Silchar, India respectively. He already has completed his doctoral thesis under the title: “Liquid crystalline characteristics and theoretical study of bent-core molecules and bio-materials”

His research objective is related to the synthesis and characterization of unsymmetrical hockey-stick shaped four-ring bent-core mesogens derived from various substituted azo dyes and unusual three ring bent-core mesogen. Theoretical calculations of the synthesized BLC have been performed using density functional calculations (DFT) to interpret the experimental result as well as to find new molecular interactions. Beside four-ring bent-core nematogens, synthesis of room temperature (I~48°C) three-ring bent-core nematic mesogen and polar ferroelectric three-ring (I~125°C) BLC is significant in his research work.

Email address: ranju.mohiuddin@gmail.com

In our lab extensive investigation has been performed on four-ring bent-core mesogen. Especially, achievement of the various types of nematic phases in this four-ring bent-core system is one of the major goals. This optical texture of nematic droplet was captured using Nikon Polarising Optical Microscope (Nikon optiphot-2-pol) equipped with Instec STC 200 hot stage and Nikon Digital sight DS-Fi1 digital camera. A four-ring bent-core mesogen with imine—ester—imine linkage sandwiched between unidirectionally rubbed normal glass plate and coverslip, on slow cooling process, from isotropic temperature (140°C) self-assemble at 135°C to construct the least strained colourful nematic droplet texture which is rarely observable in the bent-core mesogen. The formation of the nematic droplet texture itself suggests that the rotation along molecular long axis is predominant factor than self-assembling in kink direction in this bent-core mesogen or the bent-core molecules are sufficiently apart to rotate freely along molecular long axis. The image height is about 100 microns.

Jury comment: These small pretty nematic droplets formed by four-ring bent-core LC appear just like lots of sparkles in the dark night. This picture lets me think of fireflies in the spring night. How wonderful and how amazing!