Executive Summary : | Liquid crystal (LC) materials have received enormous scientific attention among researchers and technologist’s due to their distinct features and wide spread technological applications in LC based displays, photonic devices, sensors and medical for drug delivery etc. In recent years, the evolution of nanoscale materials with LCs have opened a new avenue to tailor the characteristic properties of host (LCs) material and explore next generation displays with improved properties. Continuous efforts are being made by numerous leading groups to design and develop nanomaterials-LCs composites for novel displays and lighting devices having minimum energy consumption, higher quality, lower price and environment friendly. In this regard, dispersing QDs into LC seems to be a novel strategy. The idea of dispersion of semiconducting QDs into LC is motivated by size homogeneity and synthesis versatility of QDs. Quantum confinement phenomenon of QDs allows size-dependent wavelength emission, remarkable photoluminescence quantum yield, tunable photonic bandgap, photo and thermal stability efficiency. Despite such advances, there are still many issues like getting a uniform LC alignment, highly stable and defect-free LC nanocomposites; tailoring various properties of LC from an application viewpoint. Some other questions are to understand the plausible LC-LC, QD-QD and LC-QD interaction; transferring the self-organization behavior of LC onto the QDs; effect of addition of functionalized QDs/core-shell QDs into LC; development of eco-friendly LCD based devices. So, there is a need to systematically study the semiconducting QDs-LC composites and explore these systems in detail for realization/exploitation of real-world applications. Each component (size, shape, capping agent, functionality, concentration of QDs, uniform dispersion, nematic/ferroelectric LC) plays an essential role in affecting the stability, molecular alignment, electro-optic and dielectric parameters, photoluminescence of LC-QDs nanocomposites. Therefore, this proposal would focus the preparation, optimisation and then investigate the polarization, switching time, memory effect, contrast ratio, threshold voltage, anisotropy, dielectric properties (permittivity, relaxation frequency, dielectric strength, anchoring energies), photoluminescence properties of semiconducting QDs-LC composites. The molecular alignment and phases, phase transition temperatures, thermal properties will be studied using polarizing optical microscopy with temperature controller and differential scanning calorimetry. Other optical properties of proposed materials will also be investigated using UV-Vis and PL spectroscopy techniques. These investigations will lead to a better understanding of basic theory of LC-QDs composites and in turn will strengthen the science and technology for next generation LC based displays. |