A calamitic mesogenic near-infrared absorbing croconaine dye/liquid crystalline elastomer composite

In this work, we report the first example of a calamitic mesogenic near-infrared (NIR) absorbing organic dye, made by functionalizing a thiophene-croconaine chromophore rigid core with two symmetric long flexible alkyl chains. The liquid crystal (LC) NIR dye YHD796 exhibits a sharp and intense NIR a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Chemical science (Cambridge) 2016-01, Vol.7 (7), p.44-446
Main Authors: Guo, Ling-Xiang, Liu, Mei-Hua, Sayed, Sayed Mir, Lin, Bao-Ping, Keller, Patrick, Zhang, Xue-Qin, Sun, Ying, Yang, Hong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorption
Chemical Sciences
Dyes
Elastomers
Heating
Liquid crystals
Material chemistry
Monomers
Near infrared radiation
Organic chemistry
Polymers
Solubility
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Summary:In this work, we report the first example of a calamitic mesogenic near-infrared (NIR) absorbing organic dye, made by functionalizing a thiophene-croconaine chromophore rigid core with two symmetric long flexible alkyl chains. The liquid crystal (LC) NIR dye YHD796 exhibits a sharp and intense NIR absorption band with a maximum absorption peak at 796 nm. Taking advantage of the improved solubility of YHD796 dispersed in mesogenic molecules, a homogeneously-aligned mono-domain liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE)/ YHD796 composite film is successfully prepared by applying the classical LC-cell-alignment method and in situ photo-polymerization of photocurable LC monomer mixtures. This LCE/ YHD796 composite film performs a fully reversible contraction/expansion response towards NIR light stimulus due to the photo-thermal heating effect induced by the YHD796 dye well-dispersed in the LCE matrix. The first example of a calamitic mesogenic NIR absorbing organic dye YHD796 is reported. The corresponding homogeneously-aligned LCE/ YHD796 composite film can perform a fully reversible NIR-stimulated contraction/expansion response.
ISSN:2041-6520
2041-6539
DOI:10.1039/c6sc00758a