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Liquid crystals

Electric fields line up graphene oxide

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 325–326 (2014)Cite this article

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The macroscopic alignment of dilute dispersions of graphene oxide can be controlled, with extremely large optical sensitivity, through the application of weak electric fields.

Alignment in liquid crystals originates from the entropic interactions among the anisotropic constituents1. Such orientational ordering is generally switchable by external stimuli, such as induced flow, or magnetic or electric fields (electric fields are widely employed for the optical switching of liquid-crystal displays (LCDs)). This is the case for solvent dispersions of carbon nanotubes or graphene2,3. For graphene oxide (GO)4 — a chemically modified graphene produced by oxidative exfoliation of graphite5 — however, electric fields have been ineffective at ordering GO flakes; indeed, instead of causing liquid-crystal alignment, conventional direct-current fields raise GO's electrophoretic drift and reduction at the electrodes. Reporting in Nature Materials, Jang-Kun Song and colleagues now show that efficient electric-field switching of GO liquid crystals is indeed possible in low-concentration dispersions (0.05 vol%), and demonstrate a prototype of a GO LCD6.

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Figure 1: Graphene oxide liquid-crystal formation and electric-field switching.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Ju Young Kim and Sang Ouk Kim are in the Center for Nanomaterials and Chemical Reactions, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), KAIST, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea,

    Ju Young Kim & Sang Ouk Kim

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  1. Ju Young Kim
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  2. Sang Ouk Kim
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Correspondence to Sang Ouk Kim.

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Kim, J., Kim, S. Electric fields line up graphene oxide. Nature Mater 13, 325–326 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3929

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