Webinar - SCM

Liquid crystal elastomers have emerged as an interesting class of stimuli responsive and adaptive soft materials. These functional crosslinked macromolecular materials elegantly integrate rubber elasticity and liquid crystalline order in a single system which enables unprecedented actuation modes upon judicious design. Through the control of the orientations of the anisometric mesogen moieties various actuation modes can be programmed into liquid crystal elastomers. Recently we have developed liquid crystal elastomers that exhibit photo- and thermochromism and they are able to perform biomimetic actuations. Introduction of dynamic covalent bonds into liquid crystal elastomer networks yields reconfigurable, self-healing and recyclable materials. Such covalent adaptive networks have been employed as actuators. We have fabricated a crawling robot based on a twist-bend actuation mode that exhibits omnidirectional motion on a plane. This photothermally driven soft robot not only exhibits in situ rotation, four-way turning and four-way linear motion but also shows the ability to avoid obstacles. A tubular actuator that adaptively moves towards light source and weightlifters based on elongation actuation of liquid crystal elastomers have recently been demonstrated in our research. In this talk, I will present our work on the design and fabrication of various liquid crystal elastomers and their biomimetic and soft robotic applications.