We report liquid crystal functionalized smart fabrics fabricated by gas jet spinning or electrospinning. These fabrics retain all the stimuli-responsive properties of liquid crystals. Because they are flexible, self-supporting and have large surface-area-tovolume ratios, these fabrics are ideally suited for an array of sensing applications.
Electrospinning serves as a versatile means of understanding the effects of strong cylindrical confinement on encapsulated liquid crystals (LCs) and is a promising technique for developing functional fabrics and surfaces.
We use density functional theory to explore the stable adsorption geometries of the liquid crystal molecule 5CB on a graphene sheet. First, we calculate the dependence of the polarizability of 5CB on its geometry. Our results breakdown the contributions of the cyano, biphenyl, and alkyl groups to the optical properties of 5CB, confirming the biphenyl group as the most influential. Second, we quantify possible adsorption structures of 5CB on graphene. We find that 5CB can stably adsorb with its biphenyl group oriented intermediate to the armchair and zigzag crystallographic directions, in addition to adsorbing with the biphenyl oriented along those directions.
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