ARTICLE pubs.acs.org/JPCC
Electrooptic Response of Colloidal Liquid Crystals of Inorganic Oxide Nanosheets Prepared by Exfoliation of a Layered Niobate Teruyuki Nakato,*,† Koichiro Nakamura,† Yasuhiro Shimada,† Yuko Shido,† Takeshi Houryu,‡ Yasufumi Iimura,‡ and Hirokatsu Miyata§ †
Graduate School of Bio-Applications and Systems Engineering (BASE), Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16 Naka-cho, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan ‡ Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16 Naka-cho, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan § Frontier Research Center, Canon Inc., 3-30-2 Shimomaruko, Ohta-ku, Tokyo 146-8501, Japan
bS Supporting Information ABSTRACT: Colloidally dispersed inorganic nanosheets prepared by exfoliation of layered crystals form lyotropic liquid crystals where highly anisotropic nanosheets with a constant thickness of ca. 1 nm and lateral dimension up to several micrometers work as mesogen. We investigated electrooptic properties of the niobate nanosheet colloids yielded by exfoliation of layered hexaniobate K4Nb6O17. The nanosheets initially oriented parallel to the surface of flat substrate were aligned parallel to the direction of the applied ac electric fields, resulting in electric birefringence of the colloids. The liquid crystalline colloids consisting of large nanosheets with an average lateral size around 2 μm showed a sharp response to an electric field with a low threshold voltage (
