Influence of the thickness of a Ni x O y support on the reflected wavelength from cholesteric liquid crystals

Abstract

In previous work [1-4] we found, for the first time, that the selectively reflected light band from cholesteric liquid crystals depends on the physical sorption properties of their supports, and we now use them to differentiate nickel electrodeposits with different grained texture and NixOy with various thicknesses. The different nickel oxide thicknesses were prepared by dipping the nickel electrodeposit samples into H2O2 solution for different time intervals. The selectively reflected light measurements from using the above samples were compared to each other, as well as to those from samples not dipped in H2O2 solution. All the experimental results were correlated with the properties of the deposits, as well as with the results derived from SEM. It is concluded that cholesteric liquid crystals can provide an efficient technique to identify surfaces with different grained texture and thickness of formed oxide.