title: Optical imaging of liquid crystals at the nanoscale.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 (USA), Fax: (+1) 216-368-4671. rosenblatt@case.edu.
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rosenblatt
keywords: imaging; liquid crystals; near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM); optical nanotomography