4.6 Article

A study of the microwave actuation of a liquid crystalline elastomer

Journal

SOFT MATTER
Volume 16, Issue 31, Pages 7332-7341

Publisher

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/d0sm00493f

Keywords

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Funding

  1. Open Research Fund Program of Key Laboratory of Cosmetic (Beijing Technology and Business University) China National Light Industry [KLC-2018-ZD2]
  2. Innovation Research Fund Program of Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry (Heilongjiang University), Ministry of Education, P. R. China
  3. Science and Technology Project of Heilongjiang Education Department [11531283]

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We present a method for actuating LCE materials by microwave radiation. The microwave actuation performance of a polysiloxane-based nematic liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE) was investigated. The microwave-material interaction caused a dipolar loss, which created a heating effect to trigger the nematic-isotropic transition of the LCE matrix, thus leading to the deformation actuation of the LCE material. This energy conversion from radiant energy to thermal energy provided a contactless pathway to actuate the LCE material without the aid of other components acting as energy converters. The LCE demonstrated rapid maximum contraction upon microwave irradiation, and this microwave-stimulated response was fully reversible when the microwave irradiation was switched off. More importantly, the microwave actuation exhibited superiority relative to photo-actuation, which is the usual method of contactless actuation. The microwaves can penetrate the opaque thick barriers to effectively actuate the LCE due to their strong penetrability; they can also penetrate multiple LCE samples and actuate them almost simultaneously. By taking advantage of the salient features of microwave actuation, a microwave detector system, implementing the LCE as an actuator material, was fabricated. This demonstrated the performance of monitoring microwave irradiation intensities with good sensitivity and convenient manipulation.

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