Dielectric properties of ternary composites of triblock polymer surfactant, liquid crystal and organic solvent

Abstract

Dielectric spectroscopy, at room temperature (20°C), is used to study the dielectric response of ternary mixtures of commercial nematic liquid crystal mixtures E7 and E33, an organic solvent N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidone (NMP) and a triblock polymers in the frequency range from 0.01 Hz to 1 MHz. The results indicate a dielectric relaxation in the hectohertz region. Individually, both E7 and NMP have rather large low frequency conductivities; however, the low frequency (0.01–10 Hz) behavior of the mixtures has no such behavior. We attribute this behavior to an ion getter effect of the triblock polymer surfactant. Optimized ternary mixtures obtain a real dielectric constant near 230, and loss tangent less than 0.05 at frequencies near 10 mHz.