Abstract
Functional nematic liquid crystal structures doped with nano- and bioobjects have been investigated. The self-assembling features and the photorefractive parameters of the structured liquid crystals have been comparatively studied via microscopy and laser techniques. Fullerene, quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, DNA, and erythrocytes have been considered as the effective nano- and biosensitizers of the LC mesophase. The holographic recording technique based on four-wave mixing of the laser beams has been used to investigate the laser-induced change of the refractive index in the nano- and bioobjects-doped liquid crystal cells. The special accent has been given to novel nanostructured relief with vertically aligned carbon nanotubes at the interface: solid substrate-liquid crystal mesophase. It has been shown that this nanostructured relief influences the orienting ability of the liquid crystal molecules with good advantage. As a result, it provokes the orientation of the DNA. The modified functional liquid crystal materials have been proposed as the perspective systems for both the photonics and biology as well as the medical applications.
Highlights
It is well known that the nematic liquid crystals (NLC) as the suitable model systems for the nanoparticles including have been regularly investigated and successfully considered by the different scientific and technical groups
A study of organics systems, specially dispersed liquid crystals, when properties of mesophase can be reinforced by doping of the novel dyes, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, gold nanoparticles, quantum dots, shungites, grapheme oxides, and so forth, holds the great promise Journal of Nanomaterials because they combine the properties of photosensitive components with their unique energetic levels and specific surface area and the electrooptical parameters of the LC mesophase too
It is well known that, for a system with the dimensions smaller than the optical operating wavelength (λ is 532 nm in our experiment; for comparison, LC molecules length is 15–100 angstroms, and fullerene molecules are 0.65–0.7 nm in size), the most important optical characteristic is the induced dipole, whose dependence on the applied local field can be expressed through dipole polarizabilities α(n). These are, in their turn, related to the nonlinear susceptibility χ(n) and are inversely proportional to the considered unit cell volume V. It has been shown in [24, 39, 40] that thirdorder nonlinear susceptibility χ(3), which is responsible for the change in the local volume polarizability in COANP fullerene-based LC systems, is much larger than that one for the pure nonsensitized structures
Summary
It is well known that the nematic liquid crystals (NLC) as the suitable model systems for the nanoparticles including have been regularly investigated and successfully considered by the different scientific and technical groups. LC orients particles suspended in them and acts as the model molecular matrix controlled by an applied external field. A study of organics systems, specially dispersed liquid crystals, when properties of mesophase can be reinforced by doping of the novel dyes, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, gold nanoparticles, quantum dots, shungites, grapheme oxides, and so forth, holds the great promise. The NLC systems structured with the 2-cyclooctylamino-5-nitropyridine (COANP)-C70 complex, quantum dots (QDs), DNA, and so forth have been comparatively studied as effective media for checking the laserinduced change of the refractive index and quasismectic selfassembly features and to control the effect of the interface with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the volumetric LC parameters, for example, on the spectral parameters and on the refractive index too. The extended area of the application, including the medicine area, has been predicted
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