(Chemical Science) A calamitic mesogenic near-infrared absorbing croconaine dye/liquid crystalline elastomer composite
writer：Guo, L.; Liu, M.; Mir Sayed, M.; Lin, B.; Keller, P.; Zhang, X.; Sun, Y. Yang, H.*
keywords：liquid crystal elastomer
source：期刊
specific source：Chemical Science, 2016, 7, 4400-4406.
Issue time：2016年
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.