Electric-field-induced formation of multiwalled carbon nanotube conductive pathways in positive dielectric anisotropic nematic liquid crystal host

We report here electric-field-induced conductive pathway formation in a multiwalled carbon nanotube nematic liquid crystal blend. Experiments have performed by inserting the blend into a 10 μm planar, pre-aligned indium-tin-oxide coated sandwiched type electro-optical cell. The conductive pathway formation process have confirmed by in-situ porarized optical microscopy, dielectric monitoring and conductance measurements as a function of bias voltage. When bias voltage increases, conductivity and imaginary part of the dielectric constant (ε") increases dramatically upto six and four order of magnitude respectively. Low electric field disordered state of nanotubes causes transition to the directionally aligned conductive state after some critical electric-field had applied. From our experimental results we have found that the critical field is ∼15 kV/cm. This electric-field controllable low conductive disordered to directionally aligned conductive transition technology is promising for the fabrication of low-dimensional conductive materials and applications of voltage-switch devices.