Thermally stimulated depolarization currents on colloidal liquid crystal composite system

In this paper we examined the electrical and optical properties of the pure liquid crystal 8CB and in a composite system obtained by surface modified particles ZrO2 and the liquid crystal 8CB. Using the Thermally Stimulated Depolarisation Current (TSDC) method we obtained information regarding the conduction mechanism, the activation energy and the pre-exponential frequency factor in the Arrhenius diagrams. We study the dependence of phase transition temperatures on the magnitude of the polarizing d.c. electric field previously applied on the sample. The optical transmission is slightly dependent on the polarization field and the thermal switch behavior was obtained at the nematic - isotropic transition. The TSDC and optical results are compared with the ones obtained by rheology.