“MY STUDENTS’ RESEARCH ON DENSITY FLUCTUATIONS IN GASES, CARBON-BASED MATERIALS, AND NANOPARTICLES-INDUCED CHANGES IN THE ELECTRO-OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF LIQUIDCRYSTAL BASED MICROSTRUCTURES” by Suresh C Sharma, Department of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington
In this presentation, I will recall and discuss selected works of my students on: (1)
Positronium localization in density fluctuations in gases, (2) single-walled carbon
nanotubes and condensed phases of C60, (3) diamond thin films and diamond
nanoparticles (NPs) and (4) NPs-induced changes in the electro-optical properties of
polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLCs). Following a brief review, I will focus on our recent work on: (1) optically-active nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) and silicon-vacancy (Si-V) complexes in diamond NPs and (2) noble-metal NP-induced changes in the electrooptical properties of PDLCs. While crystalline diamond and diamond thin films have been studied for a long time, it has been discovered recently that diamond NPs can be synthesized in research laboratories. This has generated interest in their potential applications in a variety of fields, from quantum information processing to medicine.
The other material, PDLCs are thin films consisting of sub-micron size droplets of
liquid crystalline materials embedded within a polymer matrix. These too have been
studied for quite some time and are the backbone of a large industry for display-related
products. PDLCs exhibit interesting electro-optical properties, which can be controlled
by external electric fields. It has been realized recently that the electro-optical properties of the PDLCs can be improved very significantly by the inclusion of small concentrations of noble-metal nanoparticles in their microstructure.
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