Improvement of the relaxation time and the order parameter of nematic liquid crystal using a hybrid alignment mixture of carbon nanotube and polyimide

Journal Article · Mon May 12 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4875615· OSTI ID:22280370

Lee, Hyojin; Yang, Seungbin; Lee, Ji-Hoon ^[1]

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1. Advanced Electronics and Information Research Center, Division of Electronic Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk 561-756 (Korea, Republic of)

We examined the electrooptical properties of a nematic liquid crystal (LC) sample whose substrates were coated with a mixture of carbon nanotube (CNT) and polyimide (PI). The relaxation time of the sample coated with 1.5 wt. % CNT mixture was about 35% reduced compared to the pure polyimide sample. The elastic constant and the order parameter of the CNT-mixture sample were increased and the fast relaxation of LC could be approximated to the mean-field theory. We found the CNT-mixed polyimide formed more smooth surface than the pure PI from atomic force microscopy images, indicating the increased order parameter is related to the smooth surface topology of the CNT-polyimide mixture.

• OSTI ID: 22280370
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 19 Vol. 104; ISSN APPLAB; ISSN 0003-6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY
CARBON NANOTUBES
LIQUID CRYSTALS
MEAN-FIELD THEORY
ORDER PARAMETERS
RELAXATION TIME