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Orientational Coupling Amplification in Ferroelectric Nematic Colloids

Fenghua Li·Oleksandr Buchnev·Chae Il Cheon·Anatoliy Glushchenko·Victor Reshetnyak·Yuri Reznikov·Timothy J. Sluckin·John L. West
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Abstract

We investigated the physical properties of low concentration ferroelectric nematic colloids, using calorimetry, optical methods, infra-red spectroscopy and capacitance studies. The resulting colloids normally remain homogeneous, but the nematic orientational coupling is significantly amplified. In particular cases, the nematic orientation coupling increases by 10% for particle concentrations of 0.2%. A manifestation of the increased orientational order is that the clearing temperature of a nematic colloid increases up to 40 Celsius degrees compared to the pure LC host. A theoretical model is proposed in which the ferroelectric particles induce local dipoles whose effective interaction is proportional to the square of the orientational order parameter.

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Fenghua Li, Oleksandr Buchnev, Chae Il Cheon, Anatoliy Glushchenko, Victor Reshetnyak, Yuri Reznikov, Timothy J. Sluckin, John L. West. 2006-03-15. Orientational Coupling Amplification in Ferroelectric Nematic Colloids. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.97.147801

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