Orientational Coupling Amplification in Ferroelectric Nematic Colloids
  We investigated the physical properties of low concentration ferroelectric nematic colloids, using calorimetry, optical methods, infra-red spectroscopy and capacitance studies. The resulting colloids normally remain homogeneous, but the nematic orientational coupling is significantly amplified. In particular cases, the nematic orientation coupling increases by 10% for particle concentrations of 0.2%. A manifestation of the increased orientational order is that the clearing temperature of a nematic colloid increases up to 40 Celsius degrees compared to the pure LC host. A theoretical model is proposed in which the ferroelectric particles induce local dipoles whose effective interaction is proportional to the square of the orientational order parameter. 
Fenghua Li, Oleksandr Buchnev, Chae Il Cheon, Anatoliy Glushchenko,   Victor Reshetnyak, Yuri Reznikov, Timothy J. Sluckin a...