Optical monitoring of surface anchoring changes for nematic liquid crystal based chemical and biological sensors

In this dissertation, optically monitoring the surface anchoring changes of liquid crystal (LC) due to the chemical or biological bindings is presented. The deformation of LC director with different anchoring energies is simulated using Finite Element Method and continuum theory of nematic LC. The optical properties of the LC film are simulated using the Finite Difference Time Domain method.;First, the interference color method was used to monitor the anchoring change. The calculated and experimental interference colors of liquid crystal films due to the optical retardation of two orthogonal electromagnetic components at different surface anchoring conditions and applied voltages are studied. The calculated colors were converted into sRGB parameters so that the corresponding colors can be displayed on a color computer monitor and printed out on a color printer. A gold micro-structure was fabricated and used to control the optical retardation. Polarizing micrographs were collected and compared with the calculated colors.;Second, the influence of a bias voltage on the surface-driven orientational transition of liquid crystals resulted from the weakening anchoring and anchoring transition is analyzed theoretically and experimentally. The same interdigitated Au micro-structure was used in the nematic LC based chemical and biological sensors. With a suitable bias electric field, the process of the weakening anchoring energy and the uniform surface-driven orientational transition due to targeted molecules binding to a functionalized surface were observed optically.;Finally, measurement of optical transmission was used to monitor the anchoring change. Polarizing micrographs were collected and compared with simulated textures. Experimental and simulation results both demonstrate the optical method can effectively monitor the surface anchoring change due to the presence of targeted analytes.;These results show that these optical techniques are suitable for LC based sensing applications and can be used to improve the sensitivity, response speed and signal strength of LC based chemical and biological sensors. A significant advance in sensitivity of LC based chemical and biological sensor can be achieved by actively monitoring anchoring energy change.