Electrical and electro-optical characterization of 5CB nematic liquid crystal mixture doped with silver nanoparticles

The interplay between liquid crystals and gold nanoparticles, i.e. liquid crystalline silver nanoparticle materials, is challenging as well as fascinating for creating novel functional materials. The resulting hybrid materials hold great promise in many applications such as displays, optics, optoelectronics, sensors, and metamaterials due to their unique properties. In this work we present both the electrical and electro-optical characterization of nanocomposites liquid crystal formed by 5CB nematic liquid crystal doped with silver nanoparticles, 0.5% wt. By using the cells for electro-optical measures (20-40 microns thicknesses) in which ITO electrodes are wide in 1300 microns and separated from each other by a gap of 75 microns, it was possible to characterize the properties of the liquid crystal nanocomposite by applying the external electric field in the plane, perpendicular to the plane and obliquely. The data obtained by the dielectric spectroscopy of dielectric permittivity were fitted by the Havriliak-Negami function with the additions of a conductivity contribution, present at lower frequencies. The results were compared with those obtained for the not doped 5B nematic liquid crystal in the same geometrical conditions of work.