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

Ling-Xiang Guo (1) , Mei-Hua Liu (1) , Sayed Mir Sayed (1) , Bao-Ping Lin (1) , Patrick Keller (2, 3) , Xue-Qin Zhang (1) , Ying Sun (1) , Hong Yang (1)

1 SEU - Nanjing Southeast University
2 PCC - Physico-Chimie-Curie
3 University of Colorado [Boulder]

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.

Domaines: Chimie organique; Matériaux; Polymères

Ling-Xiang Guo, Mei-Hua Liu, Sayed Mir Sayed, Bao-Ping Lin, Patrick Keller, et al.. A calamitic mesogenic near-infrared absorbing croconaine dye/liquid crystalline elastomer composite. Chemical Science, 2016, ⟨10.1039/c6sc00758a⟩. ⟨hal-01305445⟩