Towards Photo-Induced Swimming: Actuation of Liquid Crystalline Elastomer in Water

2016

Conference Paper

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Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs) are very promising smart materials that can be made sensitive to different external stimuli, such as heat, pH, humidity and light, by changing their chemical composition. In this paper we report the implementation of a nematically aligned LCE actuator able to undergo large light-induced deformations. We prove that this property is still present even when the actuator is submerged in fresh water. Thanks to the presence of azo-dye moieties, capable of going through a reversible trans-cis photo-isomerization, and by applying light with two different wavelengths we managed to control the bending of such actuator in the liquid environment. The reported results represent the first step towards swimming microdevices powered by light.

@inproceedings{2016cerretti,
  title = {Towards Photo-Induced Swimming: Actuation of Liquid Crystalline  Elastomer in Water},
  author = {cerretti, G. and Martella, D. and Zeng, H. and Parmeggiani, C. and Palagi, S. and Mark, A. G. and Melde, K. and Qiu, T. and Fischer, P. and Wiersma, D.},
  booktitle = {Proc. of SPIE 9738},
  pages = {Laser 3D Manufacturing III, 97380T},
  address = {Bellingham, Washington},
  month = apr,
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.1117/12.2219855},
  url = {https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/9738/1/Towards-photo-induced-swimming--actuation-of-liquid-crystalline-elastomer/10.1117/12.2219855.full?SSO=1&tab=ArticleLinkCited},
  month_numeric = {4}
}