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Electro-optical switching of graphene oxide liquid crystals with an extremely large Kerr coefficient

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 394–399 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

The sensitive response of the nematic graphene oxide (GO) phase to external stimuli makes this phase attractive for extending the applicability of GO and reduced GO to solution processes and electro-optic devices. However, contrary to expectations, the alignment of nematic GO has been difficult to control through the application of electric fields or surface treatments. Here, we show that when interflake interactions are sufficiently weak, both the degree of microscopic ordering and the direction of macroscopic alignment of GO liquid crystals (LCs) can be readily controlled by applying low electric fields. We also show that the large polarizability anisotropy of GO and Onsager excluded-volume effect cooperatively give rise to Kerr coefficients that are about three orders of magnitude larger than the maximum value obtained so far in molecular LCs. The extremely large Kerr coefficient allowed us to fabricate electro-optic devices with macroscopic electrodes, as well as well-aligned, defect-free GO over wide areas.

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Figure 1: Phase sequence, nematic volume-fraction diagram and flow-induced birefringence.
Figure 2: Electric-field-induced birefringence.
Figure 3: Extremely large Kerr coefficient and the mechanisms involved.
Figure 4: Electro-optic GO-LC device using simple macroscopic wire electrodes.
Figure 5: Director switching of induced GO-LC alignment and field-induced wide-area uniform nematic GO-LC phase.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grants funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No. 2012R1A1A1012167 and No. 2013R1A1A2057455).

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Author notes

  1. Tian-Zi Shen and Seung-Ho Hong: These authors contributed equally to this work.

  2. School of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Jangan-Gu, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do 440-746, Korea

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  1. Jang-Kun Song

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  1. Tian-Zi Shen
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Contributions

J-K.S. planned and supervised the project. T-Z.S. and S-H.H. carried out all the experiments. All authors analysed the data and participated in writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jang-Kun Song.

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Shen, TZ., Hong, SH. & Song, JK. Electro-optical switching of graphene oxide liquid crystals with an extremely large Kerr coefficient. Nature Mater 13, 394–399 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3888

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