Orientational Coupling Amplification in Ferroelectric Nematic Colloids

We investigated the physical properties of low concentration ferroelectric nematic colloids, using calorimetry, optical methods, infra-red spectroscopy and capacitance studies. The resulting colloids normally remain homogeneous, but the nematic orientational coupling is significantly amplified. In particular cases, the nematic orientation coupling increases by 10% for particle concentrations of 0.2%. A manifestation of the increased orientational order is that the clearing temperature of a nematic colloid increases up to 40 Celsius degrees compared to the pure LC host. A theoretical model is proposed in which the ferroelectric particles induce local dipoles whose effective interaction is proportional to the square of the orientational order parameter.