Molecularly‐Engineered, 4D‐Printed Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators

By M. Saed, Cedric P. Ambulo, Hyun Kim, Rohit De, Vyom Raval, Kyle Searles, Danyal A. Siddiqui, J. M. O. Cue, M. Stefan, M. R. Shankar and 1 more. Advanced Functional Materials, 2018

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Three‐dimensional structures that undergo reversible shape changes in response to mild stimuli enable a wide range of smart devices, such as soft robots or implantable medical devices. Herein, a dual thiol‐ene reaction scheme is used to synthesize a class of liquid crystal (LC) elastomers that can be 3D printed into complex shapes and subsequently undergo controlled shape change. Through controlling the phase transition temperature of polymerizable LC inks, morphing 3D structures with tunable actuation temperature (28 ± 2 to 105 ± 1 °C) are fabricated. Finally, multiple LC inks are 3D printed into single structures to allow for the production of untethered, thermo‐responsive structures that sequentially and reversibly undergo multiple shape changes.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e5edd1c21907b09e73ab4fea5342398d38dc176f

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In Biomedical Engineering

1. J. Lewis
2. Chiara Daraio

In Mechanical Engineering

1. J. Lewis
2. Chiara Daraio
3. F. Barthelat

In Polymers and Plastics

1. J. Lewis
2. Chiara Daraio
3. F. Barthelat

Citations in the corpus

• Untethered soft robotic matter with passive control of shape morphing and propulsion (2019, methodology): “The LTNI ink was composed of a thiol-terminated liquid crystalline oligomer and trivinylfunctionalized cross-linker (52), whereas the HTNI ink was composed of an acrylateterminated liquid crystalline oligomer analogous to previously reported inks composed of main-chain mesogens (Fig.”