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

作者：Guo, Ling-Xiang; Liu, Mei-Hua; Sayed, Sayed Mir; Lin, Bao-Ping; Keller, Patrick; Zhang, Xue-Qin; Sun, Ying; Yang, Hong^*

来源：Chemical Science, 2016, 7(7): 4400-4406.

DOI：10.1039/c6sc00758a

• NEMATIC ELASTOMERS
• CARBON NANOTUBES
• POLYMER NETWORKS
• SOFT ACTUATORS
• LIGHT
• DRIVEN
• CONVERSION
• CHEMISTRY
• 3D
• NANOPARTICLES

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 photothermal heating effect induced by the YHD796 dye well-dispersed in the LCE matrix.

• 出版日期2016
• 单位东南大学