Morphological, dielectric, electro-optic and photoluminescence properties of titanium oxide nanoparticles enriched polymer stabilized cholesteric liquid crystal composites

Herein, TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) dispersed polymer stabilized cholesteric liquid crystal (PSCLC) compos-ites are prepared and studied. Effect of TiO2 NPs doping in varying concentration into PSCLC, on the phases, molecular states, dielectric, electro-optic and photoluminescence properties are investigated in studied samples. The morphological studies reveal that the TiO2 NPs are responsible to switch the orien-tation of liquid crystal molecules into homeotropic state at a lower voltage. The permittivity reduced from 9.62 to 7.75 at an optimum doping amount (0.5 wt%) of TiO2 NPs. At this concentration, an improve-ment in dielectric anisotropy was found. A decrease in threshold voltage from 3.2 V to 1.4 V was observed. Further, the saturation voltage also decreases from 10.5 V to 7.5 V at 0.5 wt% doped TiO2 NPs. The photoluminescence intensity increase with TiO2 NPs concentration however emission wave-length does not change. This work may provide a facile approach to fabricate the low energy consumption based electro-optical devices with the affordable and eco-friendly nature of TiO2 NPs. (c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.