Liquid Crystals with Interfacial Ordering that Enhances Responsiveness to Chemical Targets

Abstract

The development of stimuli‐responsive materials suitable for use in wearable sensors is a key unresolved challenge. Liquid crystals (LCs) are particularly promising, as they do not require power, are light‐weight, and can be tuned to respond to a range of targeted chemical stimuli. Here, an advance is reported in the design of LCs for chemical sensors with the discovery of LCs that assume parallel orientations at free surfaces and yet retain their chemoresponsiveness. The resulting LC‐based sensors are more sensitive and exhibit faster responses than previous LC sensor designs.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
May 21, 2018
Source ID
10.1002/adma.201706707

Entities

People

  • Huaizhe Yu
  • Karthik Nayani
  • Manos Mavrikakis
  • Nanqi Bao
  • Nicholas L Abbott
  • Prabin Rai
  • Robert J Twieg

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • Kent State University
  • National Science Foundation
  • University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tags

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Quantum Chemistry
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.