Accurate Optical Detection of Amphiphiles at Liquid-Crystal-Water Interfaces

Liquid-crystal-based biosensors utilize the high sensitivity of liquid-crystal alignment to the presence of amphiphiles adsorbed to one of the liquid-crystal surfaces from water. They offer inexpensive, easy optical detection of biologically relevant molecules such as lipids, proteins, and cells. Present techniques use linear polarizers to analyze the alignment of the liquid crystal. The resulting images contain information not only about the liquid-crystal tilt with respect to the surface normal, the quantity which is controlled by surface adsorption, but also on the uncontrolled in-plane liquid-crystal alignment, thus making the detection largely qualitative. Here we show that detecting the liquid-crystal alignment between circular polarizers, which are only sensitive to the liquid-crystal tilt with respect to the interface normal, makes possible quantitative detection by measuring the transmitted light intensity with a spectrophotometer. Following a new procedure, not only the concentration dependence of the optical path difference but also the film thickness and the effective birefringence can be determined accurately. We also introduce a new dynamic mode of sensing, where (instead of the conventional steady mode, which detects the concentration dependence of the steady-state texture) we increase the concentration at a constant rate.