Abstract:

Crosslinked liquid crystal polymers (CLCPs) are a new type of material that has properties of both liquid crystals and elastomers arising from polymer networks. The remarkable properties of liquid crystal phases stem from their combination of long-range order of crystals with mobility of ?uids, such as birefringence, ?uidity, and alignment change by external ?elds. Among these properties, the most interesting one is the ability to change their shape reversibly after the application of a certain external stimulus. Photodeformation of the CLCPs is mainly triggered by UV light due to the reversible trans–cis photoisomerization of azobenzene groups incorporated into the polymer networks. Furthermore, numerous light-driven bioinspired soft actuators such as swimmer, motors, oscillators, microrobots, artificial cilia, inchworm and robotic arm have already been fabricated from azo-CLCPs. Recently, we synthesized novel azobenzene-containing side-chain liquid crystal polymers (LCPs) without any crosslinking via ring opening metathesis polymerization and succeeded in inducing the anisotropic bending of the prepared LCP fibers and films in response to light. This novel kind of the LCPs without chemical crosslinking are benefit for the fabrication of micro and even nano soft actuators through micromachining technologies.

Key Words: liquid crystal polymers, photodeformation, actuators

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Biography:

Yanlei Yu is Professor in the Department of Materials Science at Fudan University. She graduated from Anhui University in 1993 and obtained a Master’s degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1996. She gained her Doctoral degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology and was promoted to Full Professor at Fudan University in 2004. She obtained New Century Excellent Talents Fund of the Ministry of Education (2004), Shanghai Shuguang Scholar (2005), Shanghai Science and Technology Rising Star (2006), Distinguished Young Scholars Award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (2012), etc.. Her research interests focus on the development of photodeformable smart materials and light-controllable interface materials with photosensitive polymers and liquid crystal polymers. She has over 50 publications in the peer-reviewed journals with more than 1500 citations, such as Nature, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Adv. Funct. Mater., etc..