Paresh Kumar Behera, featured ILCS liquid crystal artist, April 2023

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Paresh Kumar Behera is a Ph.D. student at IIT Guwahati, working under Prof. A. S. Achalkumar's supervision (Soft Matter Research Group). His research focuses on the design and synthesis of liquid crystalline perylene derivatives for use in optoelectronics.
Research group webpage: https://www.iitg.ac.in/achalkumar/A._S._Achalkumar/Welcome.html
Contact e-mail: pares176122019(at)iitg.ac.in, pareshkumarbehera12345(at)gmail.com
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hKfds10AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
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This perylene based liquid crystalline moiety exhibits a columnar hexagonal phase. We prepared a thin film of the sample by sandwiching it between a glass slide and a coverslip and then heated the sample up to its isotropic temperature. Upon cooling the isotropic liquid at a slow rate we observed this beautiful purple colored texture at around 210 Cdeg and took the picture with a Nikon digital camera associated with the Nikon microscope (20x magnification). The image resembles the magnificent asteroid belt of the solar system.
Jury comment: The photo shows once again how liquid crystals combine science and artistic aspects, so the picture is very attractive from an aesthetic and artistic point of view.