Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
Soft Matter. 2020 Jan 2;16(2):330-336. doi: 10.1039/c9sm01923e.
Programming the local orientation of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) is a differentiated approach to prepare monolithic material compositions with localized deformation. Our prior efforts prepared LCEs with surface-enforced spatial variations in orientation to localize deformation when the LCEs were subjected to directional load. However, because these surface alignment methods included regions of planar orientation, the deformation of these programmed LCEs is inherently directional. The absence of macroscopic orientation in polydomain LCEs results in uniform, nonlinear deformation in all axes (omnidirectional soft elasticity). Here, we exploit the distinct mechanical response of polydomain LCEs prepared with isotropic or nematic genesis. By localizing the polydomain genesis via masked photopolymerizations conducted at different temperatures, we detail the preparation of main-chain, polydomain LCEs that are homogeneous in composition but exhibit spatially localized programmability in their mechanical response that is uniform in all directions.
对液晶弹性体（LCE）进行局部取向编程是一种有区别的方法，可用于制备具有局部变形的整体材料成分。我们之前的工作通过表面增强的取向空间变化来制备 LCE，以便在 LCE 受到定向载荷时局部化变形。然而，由于这些表面对准方法包括平面取向区域，因此这些编程的 LCE 的变形本质上是定向的。多畴 LCE 中不存在宏观取向导致各向同性非线性变形（各向同性软弹性）。在这里，我们利用各向同性或向列态起源的多畴 LCE 的独特机械响应。通过在不同温度下进行掩蔽光聚合来局部化多畴起源，我们详细介绍了主链多畴 LCE 的制备，这些 LCE 在组成上是均匀的，但在机械响应方面表现出空间局部可编程性，在各个方向上都是均匀的。
