Pretransitional effects in a mesogenic mixture under an electric field

Phys Rev E. 2018 May;97(5-1):052704. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.97.052704.

Abstract

Nematogenic liquids are materials that are in high demand for many application purposes. Field-induced nematic order in isotropic liquids can be observed by the enhancement of electric permittivity during dielectric spectroscopy measurements under the bias electric field. For this reason, dielectric measurements were done on a nematogenic mixture of highly polar compounds. This paper presents a discussion on the influence of the bias electric field on the dielectric response. We observed a decrease of electric permittivity in the isotropic phase under the bias electric field. This effect is most likely caused by the field-induced creation of some complex molecular objects. In the paper, relaxation parameters of the molecular modes were analyzed. The field-induced orientational order was determined using a dichroic ratio in a guest-host system. The measurements show the significant order parameter in the isotropic phase under an electric field.