Enhancement in Electro- Optical Kerr Constant of Nematic Liquid Crystal by Doping SiO2 Nanoparticles

In this research the electro-optical kerr effect of pure and doped nematic liquid crystal (nlc), e7, with different concentrations of sio2 nanoparticles were investigated at different temperatures. and the kerr constant and pre-transitional behavior of the pure and doped samples experimentally were measured. the measurements indicate that kerr constant varies inversely with temperature for all mixtures, which is in good agreement with landau-de gennes model. also, induced birefringence versus the square value of applied voltage in three temperatures near the isotropicnematic phase transition temperature were measured. the results imply that, the electrooptical response of liquid crystal increases by optimizing nanoparticle- liquid crystal composites. in the other words, the kerr constant and induced birefringence of doped liquid crystal increase by adding nanoparticles up to 0.07% wt.