The authors describe a method to produce gold nanoparticle-dispersed liquid crystals by means of sputtering, and discuss how the presence of gold nanoparticles affect the electro-optic response of the host liquid crystal. The method exploits the fact that liquid crystals possess low vapor pressures which allow them to undergo the sputtering process, and the target material is sputtered directly...

The nuclear-magnetic-resonance (NMR) technique is employed to liquid-crystal-dispersed-polymer (LCDP) systems. Deuterium NMR is used to determine director distributions in LCDP cells in the presence of a magnetic field. The samples consist of a nematic liquid crystal mixed with small percentages of a monomer that is polymerized under different conditions after dissolving it in the liquid crysta...

We prove lower semicontinuity and lower bounds for a Chen-Lubensky energy describing nematic/smectic liquid crystals with physically realistic boundary conditions. The Chen-Lubensky energy captures stable phases of the liquid crystal material, ranging from purely nematic or smectic states to coexisting nematic/smectic states. By including appropriate additional terms, the model includes the eff...

We suggest that tunable orientational nonlinearity of nematic liquid crystals can be employed for all-optical switching in periodic photonic structures with liquid-crystal defects. We consider a one-dimensional periodic structure of Si layers with a local defect created by infiltrating a liquid crystal into a pore, and demonstrate, by solving numerically a system of coupled nonlinear equations ...

We have designed an inexpensive and sensitive mechanochromic system. Our system is prepared by a simple emulsion procedure of nematic liquid crystal in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The resulting polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) exhibits a transmission change of 50% as a response to strain. Here we characterize the morphological, optical, and mechanical factors behind this transmission ch...

We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150 nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix, 5CB or MBBA. With the help of confocal microscopy we show that small colloid particles densely aggregate on thin interfaces surrounding large volumes of clean...

A new series of 2-(6-alkoxynaphthalen-2-yl)-6-methoxyquinolines (nO-NpQOMe, n = 3-8) liquid crystal compounds, a linear molecular structure with two kinks, were synthesized using a short two-step reaction with overall yields between 43% and 58%. Spectral analyses were in accord with the expected structures. Thermotropic behavior of these liquid crystal compounds were investigated using polarize...