Functional Materials

With the LPPSM at ENS Paris-Saclay, the use of mechanofluorochromic molecular materials as mechanical stress probes has been investigated. A novel setup combined with colorimetric analysis has demonstrated that fluorescence color change in difluoroboron β-diketonate complexes is induced by pressures of tens of MPa whereas only a few kPa are enough under shearing [22]. Subsequent work considers the covalent incorporation of these chemical compounds into polymers as well as the characterization of the obtained composites in order to expand the range of practical applications [24].