This work investigated changes in the physical properties of nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) upon doping with nanoparticles. Shear viscosity measurements demonstrated the shear-thinning of typical NLCs following the addition of small amounts of nanoparticles at approximately 1 wt. %. However, neither the birefringence nor the dielectric anisotropy was significantly affected at these levels of doping. The shear-thinning appears to result from the locally ordered alignment of the NLCs in the vicinity of the nanoparticles rather than from reductions in the bulk order parameters.
Improved method in measuring the sum and difference of two flexoelectric coefficient e11 and e33 by means of transmission ellipsometry was devised. Planar alignment region and hybrid alignment region are fabricated in one cell of nematic liquid crystal, so as to be firstly determined the cell gap and then be estimated e11+e33. Accuracy was improved by measuring e11-e33 with using the same sample cell.
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