Influence of silica nanoparticles on dielectric spectroscopy and polarization switching responses of novel ferroelectric liquid crystals

Silica (SiO₂) nanoparticles in different wt/wt% ratios were dispersed in a novel room temperature ferroelectric liquid crystal mixture. Dielectric relaxation spectroscopy (50 Hz–1 MHz) and electro-optic responses were investigated. Dielectric permittivity gradually decreases by about 40% up to 1 kHz with increasing SiO₂ concentration in the chiral smectic C phase. However, an increase of up to 1.5% has been observed for all the silica-doped samples above 2 kHz. We noticed an increase in optical transmission with increasing SiO₂ concentration from 0.01 to 0.1 wt/wt%.