Liquid-crystalline hybrid nanomaterials have been obtained by grafting mesogenic units around luminescent ZnO nanocrystals of 5 nm in diameter. Modifying the mesogenic density around the inorganic core allows the modulation of the liquid-crystalline behavior and its miscibility in commercial liquid crystal (LC). The strong blue photoluminescence observed for the hybrids can be modulated by applying a voltage on a LC cell containing commercial LC and 10 wt % of hybrid.
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