Torsional Actuating Liquid Crystal Elastomers

Abstract

The twisting motions of many organisms play a crucial role in enabling complex mechanical functions such as swimming, crawling, and energy storage. Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are anisotropic polymeric materials which are promising candidates for the soft-actuator owing to their stimuli-responsive properties. In this work, we report the highly reversible three-dimensional torsional actuation of LCE droplet using heat. LCE droplets are obtained by the removal of non-polymerizable mesogen within a polymerized mesogen system. We verify the twisted configuration and twisting mechanism of LCE with fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy. In addition, we design asymmetric LCE droplets by phase separation of LCE and by simply tuning droplet configuration. This versatile twisting actuation of the LCE droplets provides fundamental understanding for controlling the shape of LCEs and designing self-swimming particles. This work was supported by NRF (2021R1A2C2095010, 2022M3C1A3081312).