Quantum-Dots Dispersed Bent-core Nematic Liquid Crystals and Cybotactic Clusters: Experimental and Theoretical Insights

We study a quantum-dots dispersed bent core liquid crystalline system inside a planar cell and present experimental measurements of the order parameter, dispersion and absorption spectra, with attention to variations with temperature. Our notable findings concern the reduction of the orientation order parameter of the quantum-dots dispersed system compared to its pristine counterpart, at fixed temperatures, and the reduced order parameter for the doped system results in reduced dielectric anisotropy and reduced birefringence, amongst other electro-optic properties. We complement the experiments with a novel Landau-de Gennes type energy for a doped bent core liquid crystalline system, that qualitatively captures the doping-induced reduced order parameter and its variation with temperature.