Alloy hardening of a smectic A liquid crystal doped with gold nanoparticles

We measure the mobility of edge dislocations in a smectic A liquid crystal doped with gold nanoparticles. The mobility is found to decrease when the concentration of nanoparticles increases, which leads to a hardening of the smectic phase. It is found that the closer the temperature to the nematic phase, the weaker the hardening. The critical behavior of the mobility near the smectic A-to-nematic transition temperature is also investigated and compared to theoretical predictions. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2013