Martensitic organic crystals as soft actuators.

ABSTRACT: Being capable of rapid and complete structure switching, the martensitic phase transitions in molecular crystals are thought to hold a tremendous potential as thermally driven organic actuators. However, the mechanical engineering parlance in the assessment of their performance is not immediately legible to the chemistry research community that starts to explore these materials, and the unavailability of performance indices has precluded molecular crystals from being considered in the device design process. Here, we demonstrate that an organic martensite, hexamethylbenzene, can be used to perform work that is comparable to that of most actuator classes. Millimeter-size single crystals of this material undergo a transition between two forms by uniaxial expansion at a rate of 6.36(2) mm s-1,

SUBMITTER: Li L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6837004 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature