Gold nanoparticles doped organic liquid crystalline material for fast charge migration in nano-devices

Abstract

With the ever-growing need for low-cost, easily processable multifunctional materials and increasing miniaturisation in devices, we have landed in the era of nanodevices. Discotic liquid crystals are multifaceted materials that have shown their applicability as photonic devices, nanowires, optical switches, memory storage devices and many more. These materials show 1D conductivity which can be boosted upon doping with a suitable doping agent in appropriate concentrations. In this work, we present nanocomposite materials composed of a triphenylene discotic liquid crystal material, doped with thiol capped gold nanoparticles, and propose to apply it as a charge transportation layer in nanodevices for faster charge migration. Various techniques have been used to analyse the effect of doping on the different electrical, optical and lattice parameters of these nanocomposite systems. An increase in the value of the conductivity is obtained at higher temperatures, and it is successfully preserved till room temperature due to the presence of thiol capped gold nanoparticles in the columnar matrix. Thus, an increase in conductivity, lowering of the optical band gap, broadening of UV-Visible absorbance peak and decrease in core-to-core distance infers the increase in stability and optical and conduction properties of the host material after doping.