Optical behaviour of ZnO nanocapsules and their nanocomposites mixed with ferroelectric liquid crystal W-206E

We have prepared zinc oxide (ZnO) nanocapsules by the hydrothermal method with the assistance of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), a cationic surfactant. The photoluminescence (PL) behaviour of the ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLC), namely W-206E, ZnO nanocapsules and their mixed composites has been studied extensively. A significant enhancement of the intensity was observed in the luminescence spectra for the nanocomposites, that was caused by introducing ZnO nanostructures into ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) at room temperature. A red shift is also noticed with the variation of the concentration of the ZnO nanocapsules keeping the amount of FLC fixed. So the photoluminescence spectra of the ZnO-FLC hybrid nanostructured composites can easily be tuned by only changing the concentration of the ZnO nanomaterials.