Ricerc@Sapienza

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), characterized by high optical transparency and low surface energy, electric constant, and Young’s modulus, is widely recognized as an interesting, high-quality organic material for micro- and opto-fluidic functional systems. Other advantage of applying PDMS is its cheap and easy processing owning to the fact that PDMS-based photonic devices are typically fabricated with use of reliable technology based on a standard soft photolithography.

We present photonic devices based on a nematic liquid crystals (NLC) infiltrated in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channels, named LC:PDMS waveguides, for flexible photonic integrated circuits. A simulation study of the NLC ordering and possible defects under an electric field between coplanar gold electrodes has been carried out by a Monte Carlo approach.

In this work, nanocomposites containing assemblies of graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) and double-stranded DNA are investigated as UV-sensitive materials, as they show good electrical properties combined with the chemical sensitivity of DNA to UV radiation, particularly to the more energetic UV-C band. Nanocomposite films were prepared by drop-casting technique after embedding the graphene-DNA fillers in a flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix using a suitable solvent.