Durable liquid-crystalline vitrimer actuators.

ABSTRACT: Vitrimer-based liquid-crystalline elastomers (LCEs) exhibit great advantages over the traditional LCEs due to their inherent processability to realize monodomain alignment and construction of LCE actuators with complex 3D structures in a robust way. Though exciting progress has been made, how to achieve a proper balance between processability and actuation durability/stability remains a big challenge. Here, we report a strategy to mitigate the conflict between processability and actuation stability by reducing the catalyst content in an epoxy/acid LCE vitrimer system. With a relatively low catalyst content (0.25 mol% to carboxyl group), monodomain LCEs with large actuation strain (∼95%) and excellent actuation stability (the actuation strain is completely maintained after 100 heating-cooling cycles and more than 90% of the initial strain is retained even after 500 cycles) could be easily prepared. Moreover, the monodomain LCEs can still be readily realigned or directly reconfigured into complex reversible 3D actuators.

SUBMITTER: Chen Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6427948 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature