Electrical conductivity and dielectric constant measurements of liquid crystal–gold nanoparticle composites

Abstract

Abstract The behaviour of the anisotropic electrical conductivity of liquid crystal–gold nanoparticle (LC‐GNP) composites consisting of a commercially available room temperature nematic compound doped with alkylthiol‐capped GNPs has been investigated. The nematic–isotropic transition of the composite decreases nearly linearly with increasing X, the concentration of GNP (in weight %) at a rate of about 1°C /weight %. The inclusion of GNPs increases the electrical conductivity of the system with the value increasing by more than two orders of magnitude for X = 5%. However, the anisotropy in conductivity, defined as the ratio of the conductivity along (σ∥) and orthogonal (σ⊥) to the director shows a much smaller but definite decrease as X increases.