Agrawal Devyansh, Dong Gaoweiang, Cai Shengqiang
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, United States.
Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, United States.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2025 May 21;17(20):30094-30102. doi: 10.1021/acsami.5c04077. Epub 2025 May 6.
In this study, we present an approach to enhance the thermo-mechanical performance of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) by inducing chain entanglements through mechanical kneading. This process creates a network of highly entangled polymer chains, significantly improving the mechanical properties of LCEs, over a wide range of strain rates and temperatures. Mechanical kneading also improves the actuation performance, resulting in higher actuation stresses, greater contraction, and increased tolerance to self-rupture at elevated temperatures. Chain entanglements can also serve as a crucial enabler for the fabrication of monodomain LCEs. Using entanglements as the initial cross-linking step provides sufficient elasticity to LCEs, enabling the synthesis of aligned LCEs. This work demonstrates the benefits of chain entanglements, offering a pathway for the design and fabrication of high-performance LCE-based actuators for advanced applications.
在本研究中，我们提出了一种通过机械捏合诱导链缠结来提高液晶弹性体（LCE）热机械性能的方法。该过程形成了高度缠结的聚合物链网络，在很宽的应变速率和温度范围内显著改善了LCE的机械性能。机械捏合还改善了驱动性能，导致更高的驱动应力、更大的收缩以及在高温下对自破裂的耐受性增加。链缠结还可以作为制造单畴LCE的关键因素。将缠结用作初始交联步骤为LCE提供了足够的弹性，从而能够合成取向LCE。这项工作展示了链缠结的优势，为设计和制造用于先进应用的高性能LCE基致动器提供了一条途径。
