Tilak Joshi, featured ILCC liquid crystal artist, October 2013

for ILCS
Tilak Joshi was born in Uttarakhand, India. He is currently working as senior research fellow at National Physical Laboratory (NPL), New Delhi, India. He is pursuing his PhD from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) under the supervision of Prof. Shri Singh (BHU) and Dr. A. M. Biradar (NPL) with the joint collaboration of NPL and BHU. His main research interest lies in the study of dielectric and electro-optical properties of ferroelectric liquid crystals, effect of nano-materials doping on these properties for fundamental and application point of view. He has published over 10 research papers in reputed journals so far.
More information on google scholar: http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=c7m6TJkAAAAJ
e-mail: tiljoshi@gmail.com
October2013
This picture shows the polarizing optical micro-graph of ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC), ZLI 3654, doped with 1 wt % ferromagnetic nanoparticles. The doping results in the rod like domain formation in FLC. The stripe in between corresponds to mylar spacer which is used to maintain a desired cell gap. The mylar spacer is itself birefringent, hence different color has been observed in that area. The width of the image is 1600 microns in reality.

Jury comment: This image, of a prototypical commercial SmC* material doped with ferromagnetic nanoparticles, is highly colorful, with a very interesting texture, and gains added appeal from the apparent fact that the liquid crystal is present under transparent spacers, where the texture seems contiguous, but the birefringence colors are quite different.