Facet dependent electro-optical properties of liquid crystals doped with Au nanocrystals

Micro & nano letters

article

Meng Wang¹  Dequan Wei¹  Mingji Zong¹  Shan Gao¹ 

[1] School of Opto-electronic Engineering, Zaozhuang University

关键词: nematic liquid crystals;    surface energy;    electro-optical effects;    nanoparticles;    gold;    doping profiles;    impurities;    surface energy;    doping concentration;    screening effect;    electro-optical properties;    nematic liquid crystals;    octahedral Au nanocrystals;    4-cyano-4′-n-pentylbiphenyl;    rhombic dodecahedral Au nanocrystals;    cubic Au nanocrystals;    crystal planes;    threshold voltage;    saturation voltage;    impurity particles;    electric field;    Au;   

DOI  :  10.1049/mnl.2019.0733

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Doping nanoparticles into liquid crystal (LC) systems can effectively improve the electro-optical (E-O) properties of LCs. The authors introduced three types of (cubic, octahedral, and rhombic dodecahedral) Au nanocrystals (NCs) into a nematic LC 4-cyano-4′-n-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) and investigated the facet-dependent Au NCs in improving the E-O properties of 5CB. The surface energies of Au facets decreased in the order {110}>{100}>{111}. The improvement in the E-O properties of LC is related to the interaction between LC and different exposed crystal planes of dopants. Dodecahedral Au NCs, exposing {110} facets, are the most effective in improving the E-O properties because of their highest surface energy, resulting in a 30.15% reduction of the threshold voltage (V th ) and a 29.08% of the saturation voltage (V sat ) at a doping concentration of 0.4 wt%. The Au NCs trapped impurity particles. The screening effect could be suppressed, and the electric field could be strengthened, resulting in outstanding E-O properties. This work provides a novel way to enhance the E-O properties of LC molecules by doping with noble metal nanomaterials, thus improving their potential applications in energy-saving LC displays.

【 授权许可】

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