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Optical Imaging of Liquid Crystals at the Nanoscale
Author(s) -
Rosenblatt Charles
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
chemphyschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.016
H-Index - 140
eISSN - 1439-7641
pISSN - 1439-4235
DOI - 10.1002/cphc.201300978
Subject(s) - liquid crystal , near field scanning optical microscope , nanometre , nanoscopic scale , optical microscope , diffraction , materials science , nanotechnology , optics , instrumentation (computer programming) , microscopy , optoelectronics , physics , scanning electron microscope , computer science , operating system
The instrumentation associated with near‐field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) can be exploited to provide three‐dimensional structure and dynamic information about liquid crystals at scales not possible with diffraction‐limited tools. This Minireview focuses on our use of NSOM techniques to probe spatial variations of the nematic director and the nematic orientational order parameter on length scales as small as a few nanometers.