Changing liquid crystalline phase with field

ABSTRACT

Since 1888, the liquid crystal display (LCD) industry is facing a fierce competition due to serious limitations such as poor contrast ratio and response time. Although some new materials have offered new applications and opened new markets for LCDs, materials with improved contrast ratio are highly desirable in LCD industry to sustain in the current market. This work reports a new behaviour in nano-material-doped liquid-crystal composite which is suitable for eradicating limitations of contrast ratio. Here, a high concentration of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is doped in liquid crystal (LC) materials wherein the CNTs form aggregates in the LC composition. In these heavily doped samples, the phase change takes place with application of bias. This reversible process improves the contrast ratio as the material oscillates between crystalline and LC phases with field.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon nanotubes
• agglomeration
• nematic liquid crystals
• phase transition

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the referee for his valuable suggestion that helped in improving the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are thankful to the Department of Science and Technology, India, for the financial support.