Manipulated and Improved Photoinduced Deformation Property of Photoresponsive Liquid Crystal Elastomers by Copolymerization

Photoresponsive liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) have aroused much attention due to their unique structures, properties, and potential applications. However, many reported photoresponsive LCEs show small photoinduced deformation with a slow deformation speed, which limits their application to a certain extent. In this article, multiple hydrogen bond component and biphenyl component was introduced into photoresponsive LCEs bearing cyanostilbene by copolymerization, and prepared a series of LCEs CSm-BPn (CS and BP means cyanostilbene and biphenyl component, respectively; m, n means the content ratio of CS and BP). All uniaxially oriented CSm-BPn fibers show photoinduced deformation behavior under 365 nm UV light except for CS0-BP5. The introduction of hydrogen bond and the decrease of glass transition temperature realize large deformation and fast deformation speed. Besides, the properties of LCEs are successfully regulated by changing the content ratio of each component. What's more interesting is that the addition of appropriate amount of biphenyl can significantly improve and manipulate the deformation property of the CSm-BPn fibers. The maximum bending angle can reach 175 degrees, and the whole photoinduced deformation process only takes 11 s. The photoresponsive LCEs with such large bending angle and fast deformation rate are rarely reported.

Automated summary

This paper successfully achieved large deformation and fast deformation speed in photoresponsive LCEs by introducing multiple hydrogen bond components and biphenyl components. Additionally, the properties of LCEs were regulated by changing the content ratio of each component.