CPOS Seminar: Donor Acceptor Stenhouse Adducts for deep, white light photo-mechanical response of liquid crystal elastomers

Speaker: Jesus Guillen Campos , PhD Student, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSB

Abstract:  Donor acceptor Stenhouse adducts (DASAs) are a new family of photoswitches that is characterized to have visible light switching, tunability, high extinction coefficients and to be a multi-stage photoswitch. However, functionalization of these molecules into photo-responsive materials has remained unexplored. In this work, liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are functionalized with DASAs to yield negative photo-chromic materials with photo-chemical responses like sample bleaching, film bending, contraction and good reversibility in thick films . The behavior of DASA in anisotropic materials is explored as well as switching properties and thermo-mechanical actuation.