TY - JOUR U1 - Wissenschaftlicher Artikel A1 - Pschyklenk, Lukas A1 - Wagner, Thorsten A1 - Lorenz, Alexander A1 - Kaul, Peter T1 - Optical Gas Sensing with Encapsulated Chiral-Nematic Liquid Crystals JF - ACS Applied Polymer Materials N2 - Optical gas sensors based on chiral-nematic liquid crystals (N* LCs) forming one-dimensional photonic crystals do not require electrical energy and have a considerable potential to supplement established types of sensors. A chiral-nematic phase with tunable selective reflection is induced in a nematic host LC by adding reactive chiral dopants. The selective chemical reaction between dopant and analyte is capable to vary the pitch length (the lattice constant) of the soft, self-assembled, one-dimensional photonic crystal. The progress of the ongoing chemical reaction can be observed even by naked eye because the color of the samples varies. In this work, we encapsulate the responsive N* LC in microscale polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) fibers via coaxial electrospinning. The sensor is, thus, given a solid form and has an improved stability against nonavoidable environmental influences. The reaction behavior of encapsulated and nonencapsulated N* LC toward a gaseous analyte is compared, systematically. Making use of the encapsulation is an important step to improve the applicability. KW - liquid crystal KW - chiral-nematic KW - tunable pitch KW - low molecular weight KW - coaxial electrospinning KW - encapsulation Y1 - 2020 UN - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1044-opus-48894 SN - 2637-6105 SS - 2637-6105 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.0c00142 DO - https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.0c00142 VL - 2 IS - 5 SP - 1925 EP - 1932 PB - American Chemical Society (ACS) ER -