Enantioselective absorption of chirally doped liquid crystalline networks studied by the use of an electronic microbalance

A polydomain cholesteric elastomer was obtained by cross-linking a nematic side-chain polysiloxane in the presence of a chiral dopant. After extraction of the chiral dopant, sorption experiments were performed, by the use of an electronic microbalance, in the presence of each enantiomer of a chiral amine molecule. The sorption kinetics corresponds to a Fickian diffusion behavior. They allowed us to determine the diffusion coefficients and to show that the doped polymer has a more pronounced affinity toward one of the enantiomers.