The effects of carbon nanotubes on the clearing transition of the antiferroelectric liquid crystal MHPOBC

abstract

We present a first attempt to study the effect of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the clearing transition, from SmA* to isotropic liquid phase, of the antiferroelectric liquid crystal 4'-Octyloxy-biphenyl-4-carboxylic acid 4-(1-methyl-heptyloxycarbonyl)-phenyl ester (MHPOBC), following two methods to introduce the CNTs. On the one hand, they are dispersed before in the nematic liquid crystal mixture E7 and then mixed with MHPOBC. While it allows decent quality of the CNT dispersion, the effects of E7 itself on the MHPOBC phase sequence is very strong. As a complementary approach to avoid this effect, we therefore also dispersed dry CNT powder directly in MHPOBC.

Keywords:

• Carbon nanotubes
• antiferroelectric liquid crystals
• phase transition