Enhanced electro-optical nonlinear responses of doped nematic liquid crystals: Towards optoelectronic devices

Liquid crystals with high electro-optical responses play significant roles in optics and photonics. Providing a simple method for increasing the electro-optical behaviors of liquid crystals can be considered one of the most important and challenging research areas. In this work, left-handed chiral dopants and temperature effects on the electro-optical properties of pure and doped nematic liquid crystals with different percentages of chiral dopants were investigated. Despite decreasing the Kerr constant by increasing the percentage of chiral dopants, and temperature, the maximum values were observed for 4% of chiral dopants near the transition temperature. In this case, the value of Kerr constant is approximately 20 times that of a pure liquid crystal sample. This interesting result can be related to the changes in molecular polarizability due to molecular interactions. Hence, doped liquid crystals with high and controllable responses can be a good candidate for designing optoelectronic devices.

Automated summary

This study investigates the effects of left-handed chiral dopants and temperature on the electro-optical properties of pure and doped nematic liquid crystals. The results show that the maximum value of the Kerr constant, which is approximately 20 times that of a pure liquid crystal sample, is observed near the transition temperature with a chiral dopant percentage of around 4%. This suggests that doped liquid crystals with high and controllable responses can be used for designing optoelectronic devices.