Abstract
A small quantity of nanodiamonds (NDs) was dispersed in a nematic liquid crystal (LC), and the NDs were found to exhibit an anisotropic self-assembly along the nematic director. The anisotropic assembly of the NDs in the LC matrix was probed by measuring the dielectric anisotropy, Δε, of the LC+ND system, which showed a significant increase in Δε. Additional studies revealed that the presence of NDs reduced the rotational viscosity and the pretilt angle of the LC. The studies were carried out with several ND concentrations in the LC and the experimental results coherently suggest that there exists an optimal concentration of ND. Above this optimal ND concentration, the anisotropic assembly of the NDs was found to be not effective anymore. The rotational viscosity and the pretilt angle of the LC were found to increase above the optimal concentration of ND.
Highlights
Controlled self-assembly of nanodiamonds (NDs) holds great promise for important applications, such as bio-imaging[1] and quantum computing.[2]
It is well established that the liquid crystal (LC) can be used to self-assemble various nanoparticles
Carbon nanotubes can be aligned in an LC media and an external field can be used to reorient them with the nematic director.[12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
Summary
Controlled self-assembly of nanodiamonds (NDs) holds great promise for important applications, such as bio-imaging[1] and quantum computing.[2] NDs contain imperfections called nitrogen vacancy centers,[3] where a nitrogen atom replaces one of the carbon atoms Electron spins in these nitrogen vacancy centers can be manipulated using magnetic fields to take advantage of properties, such as quantum entanglement.[4] assembling NDs in large arrays is of great interest to quantum computing.[5] finding ways to assemble NDs in arrays is an active area of both fundamental and applied research.[6,7,8,9,10,11]. The dielectric constant ε was extracted using ε
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