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Thermal and Electrical Actuation of Liquid Crystal Elastomers/Gels

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Soft Actuators

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Abstract

This review describes the thermal and electrical actuation of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) which have the strong coupling between the macroscopic shape and LC alignment. Various types of thermal deformation such as elongation/contraction, bending, and torsion are driven by controlling the director configuration in LCEs. The periodic surface undulation is thermally induced using the helical director configuration in cholesteric elastomers. The nematic elastomers with polydomain alignment, which are prepared in the high-temperature isotropic state, undergo the realignment of local directors at modest strengths of external field, resulting in the electrically driven deformation. The cholesteric gels with helical director configuration exhibit the pronounced electro-optical effects for selective reflection coupled to electromechanical effects.

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Acknowledgment

This work was partly supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research (Grant No. 16K14080) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (Grant No. 18H02034) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kyoto, Japan

    Kenji Urayama

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  1. Kenji Urayama
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Correspondence to Kenji Urayama .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Ikeda, Japan

    Kinji Asaka

  2. Graduate Faculty of Interdisciplinary Research, University of Yamanashi, Kofu, Japan

    Hidenori Okuzaki

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Urayama, K. (2019). Thermal and Electrical Actuation of Liquid Crystal Elastomers/Gels. In: Asaka, K., Okuzaki, H. (eds) Soft Actuators. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6850-9_16

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