Hydrogen bonding intermolecular effect on electro-optical response of doped 6PCH nematic liquid crystal with some azo dyes

• Electro-optical response of doped LC strongly depend on the nature of intermolecular interaction.
• Low amount of dopant in LC increase order, Kerr constant and third order nonlinear susceptibility.
• Nonlinear properties of the liquid crystalline matrix can be decreased with high amount of dopant.

Previous studies on the electro-optical responses of dye-doped liquid crystal have shown that dopant material have a considerable effect on their electro-optical responses. Despite the studies carried out on electro-optical properties of dye-doped liquid crystal, no attention has been paid to study of the interaction and structural effects in this procedure. In this paper, linear dyes and with similar structure were selected as dopants. The only difference in used dyes is the functional groups in their tails. So, doping of these dyes into liquid crystals determines the influence of interaction type on electro-optical behaviours of the doped systems. Therefore, in this work, two aminoazobenzene (“A-dye”: hydrogen bond donor) and dimethyl-aminoazobenzene (“B-dye”) dyes with different compositional percentages in liquid crystal host were used. Electro-optical Kerr behaviour, the pre-transition temperature and third order nonlinear susceptibility were investigated. The obtained results effectively revealed that type of interactions between the dye and liquid crystal is determinative of behavioral difference of doped system, compared to pure liquid crystal. Also, pre-transitional behaviour and thereupon Kerr electro-optical responses were affected by formed interactions into doped systems. In other words, it will be shown that addition of any dopants in liquid crystal, regardless of the nature of interactions, cannot cause appropriate electro-optical responses. In fact, type of dye, nature of interactions between dopant and liquid crystalline host as well as concentration of dye are the key factors in selecting the appropriate liquid crystal and dopant dye.

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