Programmable and adaptive mechanics with liquid crystal polymer networks and elastomers.

By Timothy J. White, D. Broer. Nature Materials, 2015

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Bioinspired underwater locomotion of light-driven liquid crystal gels (2020, positive): “Swelling both LCNs and LCEs with low-molecular-weight LCs forms liquid crystalline gels (LCGs) that are more sensitive to external stimuli (25).”
Morphing in nature and beyond: a review of natural and synthetic shape-changing materials and mechanisms (2016, background): “Artificial systems in which molecular-scale structures change position or orientation upon the application of an energy source, causing a change in dimensions while retaining approximately constant volume, include liquid crystals [37] and ionic-polymer metal composites, [38] among other electroactiv”
Controllable and reversible tuning of material rigidity for robot applications (2018, background): “For example, liquid crystal elastomers’ modulus can be varied between 1 MPa at room temperature and approximately 5 kPa at 80 C [33,90].”
Electrospun liquid crystal elastomer microfiber actuator (2021, background): “Liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) has recently shown to be a promising soft actuating material (11, 12).”