Luz Martinez-Miranda: Properties of a nanocomposite consisting of a mixture of a liquid crystal and a magnetic nanoparticle, and their possible use in MRI
Professor at Department of Materials Science and Engineering
University of
Maryland
We study the properties of a nanocomposite consisting of a ferroelectric
liquid crystal and a magnetic nanoparticle in order to explore the possibility
of using it as a magnetic resonant imaging contrast agent which will measure a
field of 20 V/m. To achieve this we investigate how varying the electric
properties influence the magnetic properties of the mixture. The electric
properties come from the liquid crystal whereas the magnetic properties come
from the nanoparticles. These nanoparticles are nominally 2–3 nm in diameter
and we vary their concentrations in the liquid crystal. We find that the 10.8
wt% sample give a better response of the liquid crystal to a small applied
electric field. This concentration exhibits nanoparticle clusters contained inside
droplets of about 5 − 10 μm in diameter. We estimate the value of the magnetic
field inside a 7mm droplet if every nanoparticle is aligned with
the electric field. In addition, we observe how the ordering in the droplets
changes as a function of the increasing applied electric field and associate it
with the magnetic field.