Vertical Contact‐Separation Process of Liquid Crystal Micro‐Droplets for Chirality Sensing Mechanism

Abstract

We propose a novel mechanism for visualizing the chirality of compounds in solution using a vertical contact‐separation process (VCSP) of liquid crystal micro‐droplets (LCμDs). By employing the VCSP between target micro‐droplets and sensor LCμDs, the chiral compounds initially introduced in the target micro‐droplets diffuse into coalescent micro‐droplets. After the VCSP, we observed a wavelength shift in the selective reflection from the sensor LCμDs, allowing us to visualize the chirality present in the target micro‐droplets. To quantitatively analyze the wavelength shift of the selective reflection, we utilized reflective spectroscopic techniques. Our findings demonstrate that the chirality sensing mechanism achieves a detection accuracy of 10 μg. Moreover, this chiral sensing mechanism can be effectively applied to two‐dimensional micro‐droplet array systems. © 2023 Institute of Electrical Engineer of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC.