Stiffening Liquid Crystal Elastomers with Liquid Crystal Inclusions.

ABSTRACT: Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are promising building blocks for soft robots, given their large, programmable, reversible, and stimuli-responsive shape change. Enhancing LCEs' stiffness and toughness has been a longstanding desire previously explored by reinforcing them with fillers, crystalline microdomains, and interpenetrating polymer networks. While promising, these methods adversely affect molecular order and thermal strain. Here, a significant enhancement of the stiffness of LCEs is reported by loading them with low molecular weight liquid crystals (LMWLCs) without sacrificing thermal strain and molecular order. While pristine LCEs rapidly transition to a soft elastic plateau when strained from poly- to monodomain, LC-loaded samples (LC-LCEs) first experience a pronounced linear el

SUBMITTER: Vasanji S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12617047 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature