| |
 |
UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2024-11-22 2:35 |
 |
|
|
|
Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2012 Meeting
Section: Polymer Physics
Title:
Liquid Crystals - Carbon Nanotubes Mixtures
Authors:
V. POPA-NITA
Affiliation:
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, P. O. Box MG-11, Bucharest 077125
E-mail
v.popanita@gmail.com
Keywords:
liquid crystals, carbon nanotubes, mixtures, phase ordering
Abstract:
Mixtures composed of liquid crystalline phases and carbon nanotubes are promising to open gates to various applications. In these systems, the liquid crystal typically provide a soft, flexible and optical anisotropic carrier for carbon nanotubes. The carbon nanotubes either introduce new quality into a system, or they are exploited to quantitatively enhance effective liquid crystal material properties. Reversely, the liquid crystal could be used to promote orientational ordering of carbon nanotubes or to trigger formation of new complex structures which might posses self-organizing capabilities. In this contribution, we consider liquid crystal driven alignment of carbon nanotubes. They orient parallel to average direction of liquid crystal alignment with an orientational order parameter between 0.6 to 0.9. Both, thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystal phases has been successfully applied as aligning solvents. We extend the mesoscopic model presented in [1-3] to include the effect of length bidispersity of carbon nanotubes on the phase diagram and alignment properties of the dispersion. The phase ordering of mixtures is analyzed as a function of volume fractions, the strength of liquid crystal-carbon nanotubes coupling and the temperature.
|
|
|
|