Gayatri Kalita featured ILCS liquid crystal artist, August 2020

Stacks Image 269
Dr. Gayatri Kalita received her Ph.D degree from Assam University, India under the supervision of Prof. Manoj k Paul and Prof. N V S Rao. She also worked as a research associate with Dr. Dipak Prajapati and Dr. Gokul Baishya in chemical science and technology division, CSIR-NEIST,Assam. Her research interest is design, synthesis, optical properties of bent-core liquid crystals.
Stacks Image 219
This picture was obtained for a four ring achiral bent core compound with 2-methyl-3-amino-benzoic acid as the central core and a methoxy substituent at one end of the four-ring bent-core liquid crystal consisting of an azo benzene group in the longer side arm and a salicyldimine moiety bearing a hydroxyl chain at the other end. The image is taken in a normal glass plate covered with a glass slip at 145ºC under a Nikon Polarising microscope (Nikon optiphot-2-pol) attached with Instec STC 200 hot stage and Nikon Digital sight DS-Fi1 digital camera. The image height is about 100 microns.
Jury comment: The archetypal texture of a nematic picture with 2 and 4 brush defects is stunning simple and beautiful.