Design of Liquid Crystal Elastomer Droplets with Versatile Actuation Properties

Abstract

In nature, twisting motions of many organisms enable complex mechanical function such as swimming, crawling, climbing and energy storage. Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are anisotropic polymeric materials which are promising candidates for the soft-actuator owing to their capability of stimuli-responsive properties. In this work, we report the highly reversible three-dimensional torsional actuation of LCE droplet using heat. LCE droplet was obtained by removing non-polymerizable mesogen after simply mixing non-polymerizable and polymerizable mesogen. We verify the twisted configuration and twisting mechanism of LCE with fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy. In addition, we designed asymmetric LCE droplet by phase separation of LCE and by simply tuning droplet configuration. This versatile twisting actuation of LCE droplet give us fundamental of shape control of LCE and design self-swimming particles. This work was supported by the NRF (2021R1A2C2095010, 2022M3C1A3081312).