4D Printing of Supramolecular Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators Fueled by Light

Printing low-voltage dielectric elastomer actuators

Inkjet printing of carbon black electrodes for dielectric elastomer actuators

Inkjet printing is an appealing technique to print electrodes for Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs). Here we present the preparation and ink-jet printing of a carbon black electrode mixture and characterise its properties. Carbon black has been used extensively in the past because it is very compliant; however, it has a high resistance and can be very dirty to work with. In this paper we sh...

Self-Regulating Iris Based on Light-Actuated Liquid Crystal Elastomer.

The iris, found in many animal species, is a biological tissue that can change the aperture (pupil) size to regulate light transmission into the eye in response to varying illumination conditions. The self-regulation of the eye lies behind its autofocusing ability and large dynamic range, rendering it the ultimate "imaging device" and a continuous source of inspiration in science. In optical im...

Topology optimization for the design of folding liquid crystal elastomer actuators.

Aligned liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are capable of undergoing large reversible shape change in response to thermal stimuli and may act as actuators for many potential applications such as self-assembly and deployment of micro devices. Recent advances in LCE patterning tools have demonstrated sub-millimetre control of director orientation, enabling the preparation of materials with arbitrar...

Electrospun Composite Liquid Crystal Elastomer Fibers

We present a robust method to prepare thin oriented nematic liquid crystalline elastomer-polymer (LCE-polymer) core-sheath fibers. An electrospinning setup is utilized to spin a single solution of photo-crosslinkable low molecular weight reactive mesogens and a support polymer to form the coaxial LCE-polymer fibers, where the support polymer forms the sheath via in situ phase separation as the ...