Optical microscopy

…Sudipta Seth presents optical microscopy and spectroscopy that convert local material function into spatially and temporally resolved contrast under working conditions. Applied to halide perovskites, these methods expose local fields, transport bottlenecks and defect chemistry affecting solar-cell performance. The resulting mechanisms guide improved probes, interfaces

…while they can be directly observed by optical microscopy. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the liquid crystalline behaviour of so-called bent-core, or banana-shaped, molecules. This is due to their ability to form exotic biaxial nematic phases such as the twist-bend and splay-bend nematic phase,