Effect of surfactant molecules on the electrooptical properties of nematicemulsions

Switchable nematic emulsions can be obtained by fast cooling of isotropic m ixtures of nematic liquid crystal and monomers. Films obtained with this pr ocedure show very low saturation fields but rather long relaxation times. I n this paper, we doped nematic emulsions with different percentages of surf actant agents to obtain a good compromise between low saturation fields and fast relaxation times. The decay time decreases in a significant way, and the saturation field is slightly affected by the additional small amounts o f surfactant. Experimental results are shown to be in rather good agreement with a phenomenological model.