Enhancement in electrical conductivity of liquid crystals by graphene metal oxide composites.

Enhancing the electrical conductivity of liquid crystal (LC) circumvents challenges for application in advanced electronic components. Toward this, using additives made of different nanostructures that could result in functional LCs is suggested. In this paper, various concentrations of graphene (Gr)/metal-oxide (Fe3O4) nanocomposite (GMN) (0.0001-1 w%) were added to E7 nematic LC. We found that the role of anisotropic Gr flakes, their edges as well as surface-decorated-metal-oxide-additives have significant impact on electrical properties of E7. A range of appropriate additives of such a nanocomposite enhances the electrical conductivity of LCs. This effect can be traced through the decrease in the formation of GMN aggregates in the E7 and increase in the electrostatic field at the edges of the Gr sheets. Moreover, the presence of metal-oxide nanoclusters due to the presence of oxygen vacancies and defects facilitates the construction of conductive network for improving the charge transfer pathways and contributes to a stronger interaction of the Gr surface with charged species. These factors can provide Gr layers as dipole moments and lead to signal propagation in the dielectric medium. Our finding conveys a pathway toward significant enhancement of electrical conductivity in the LC family which can be useful for functional applications.

Fabrication of a liquid-gated enzyme field effect device for sensitive glucose detection.

This study presents fabrication of a liquid-gated enzyme field effect device and its implementation as a glucose biosensor. The device consisted of four electrodes on a glass substrate with a channel functionalized by carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes-polyaniline nanocomposite (MWCNTCOOH/PAn) and glucose oxidase. The resistance of functionalized channel increased with increasing the concentration of glucose when an electric field was applied to the liquid gate. The most effective and stable performance was obtained at the applied electric field of 100 mV. The device resistance, R, exhibited a linear relationship with the logarithm of glucose concentration in the range between 0.005 and 500 mM glucose. The detection limit (S/N = 3) for glucose was about 0.5 µM. Large effective area and good conductivity properties of MWCNTCOOH/PAn nanocomposite were the key features of the fabricated sensitive and stable glucose biosensor.