Suspensions of Colloidal Plates in a Nematic Liquid Crystal: A Small Angle X-ray Scattering Study

Suspensions of anisometric particles in the nematic phase of a liquid crystalline host solvent were prepared. We chose Claytone AF, a commercial quaternary ammonium surfactant treated montmorillonite, with an aspect ratio of up to 1:2000, and dimethyldioctadecylammonium bromide treated Laponite, with an aspect ratio of 1:8 as the dispersed particles. K15, a nematogenic compound (also known as 5CB), was the dispersing medium. The suspensions were characterised by small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). The liquid crystal delaminates the clays well, but the scattering curves from Claytone suspensions have prominent first and second order pseudo Bragg peaks, indicating that stacking of clay plates has occurred. We report a model for fitting SAXS data based on Hosemann’s theory for suspensions of plane parallel sheets.