Shear-Thinning Characteristics of Nematic Liquid Crystals Doped with Nanoparticles
Munehiro Kimura,
Zur Ain Binti Hanafi,
Tatsuya Takagi,
Ryosuke Sawara,
Shuji Fujii
Affiliations
Munehiro Kimura
Department of Electrical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, 940-2188 Niigata, Japan
Zur Ain Binti Hanafi
Department of Electrical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, 940-2188 Niigata, Japan
Tatsuya Takagi
Department of Electrical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, 940-2188 Niigata, Japan
Ryosuke Sawara
Department of Electrical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, 940-2188 Niigata, Japan
Shuji Fujii
Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, 060-8628 Sapporo, Japan
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.
