Liquid crystal (LC) based sensors have been investigated over the past decades in an effort to develop low cost, portable, field-deployable, highly selective chemical and biological sensors. Due to the collective behavior and the highly anisotropic properties of liquid crystal molecules, detection of very low levels (ppbs) of chemical and biological agents is possible. However, present LC sensors rely on a threshold concentration of a targeted analyte to cause a surface driven molecular reorientation of the LC molecules. In this paper, we present techniques using capacitive transduction to monitor anchoring energy that improve sensitivity of LC based sensors.

Date Published: 7 September 2011
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 8114, Liquid Crystals XV, 81140D (7 September 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.893668

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8114:
Liquid Crystals XV
Iam Choon Khoo, Editor(s)