Friday, 4th May 2007 (4182 views)

Embedding gold nanoparticles into liquid crystal display (LCD) screens could increase their performance, new research has revealed.

LCDs are made up of a liquid crystal solution contained between two glass plates inside the display. An electric field is applied to the liquid crystal molecules and causes them to align in different formations, depending on the field.

New research has found that introducing doped metal nanoparticles (MNPs) into liquid crystal solutions allows for the alignment of more complex formations among the liquid crystal molecules.

The problem for scientists had been that the introduction of MNPs into a liquid solution tended to destabilise it, however they recently developed a new process which keeps the solution stable.

"We developed a new approach of obtaining a metal nanoparticle's assemply directly from a metal precursor where our template itself plays a role in synthesising nanoparticles, stabilising them and assembling them in defined structures," Dr George John told Nanowerk.com.

Gold nanoparticles in different shapes such as boomerangs, elongated rods and spheres were synthesised to align liquid crystal particles into a number of different structures.

"So far we are able to obtain nanoparticle-embedded stabilised liquid crystals" explained Dr John. "We are conducting further studies on the performance of MNP-embedded LCDs for display application."

 

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