Statistical Theory of Helical Twisting in Nematic Liquid Crystals Doped with Chiral Nanoparticles

Theory of ferroelectric nanoparticles in nematic liquid crystals.

Recent experiments have reported that ferroelectric nanoparticles have drastic effects on nematic liquid crystals-increasing the isotropic-nematic transition temperature by about 5 K, and greatly increasing the sensitivity to applied electric fields. To understand these effects, we develop a theory for the statistical mechanics of ferroelectric nanoparticles in liquid crystals. This theory pred...

Liquid crystals doped with magnetic nanoparticles

The paper presents an overview of the observations of structural transitions in ferronematics based on thermotropic nematics 4-cyano-4'octylbiphenyl (8CB) and 4-trans-4’-n-hexyl-cyclohexyl-isothiocyanato-benzene (6CHBT). The determination of the surface density of anchoring energy of nematic molecules on magnetic particles surfaces by the observations of the structural transitions in external f...

Enhancement of the helical twisting power with increasing the terminal chain length of nonchiral bent-core molecules doped in a chiral nematic liquid crystal

In this work, we prepared a series of nonchiral bent-core molecules with different terminal alkoxy chain lengths, and measured the helical twisting power (HTP) of the bent-core molecules doped in a chiral nematic liquid crystal (N*LC). We investigated the doping effect through the colour change and spectral change due to the Bragg (selective) reflection and found that the bent-core molecules wi...

Continuum Theory of Biaxial Nematic Liquid Crystals

Pseudo-Casimir effect in untwisted chiral nematic liquid crystals.

We investigate theoretically the pseudo-Casimir force between parallel plates immersed in a chiral nematic liquid crystal. We focus on small-separation limit where the director configuration between the plates inducing strong homeotropic anchoring is uniform. We find that the force is attractive at separations smaller than the crossover distance and repulsive otherwise, and that it diverges log...