A highly-stable multi-responsive bimorph liquid crystal actuator with chemically soldered heterogenous interface

Hong Chen; Xin Yao; Hai-Li Qin; Yu-Jie Cai; Huai-Ping Cong; Shu-Hong Yu

doi:10.59717/j.xinn-mater.2025.100144

The Innovation Materials > 2025 Vol. 3 > No. 3 > 100144

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A highly-stable multi-responsive bimorph liquid crystal actuator with chemically soldered heterogenous interface

1.
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China
2.
Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
3.
Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230009, China

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Corresponding authors: hpcong@hfut.edu.cn (H.C.); yush@sustech.edu.cn (S.Y.)
Received Date: December 30, 2024

Accepted Date: May 29, 2025

Published Online: June 13, 2025

The Innovation Materials 3(3), https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-mater.2025.100144 | Cite this article

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PUBLIC SUMMARY

PUBLIC SUMMARY
1. The high-performance bimorph actuator is fabricated by an interfacial polymerization strengthening strategy.
  
  The tightly-combined heterogeneous interface leads to the promoted photo- and electric-driven properties.
  
  The actuator exhibits highly-stable multi-responsiveness to light, electricity, and humidity.
  
  The actuator showcases great potential for intelligent soft robots.

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT

Stimuli-responsive liquid crystal (LC) actuators are in high demand in bioinspired robotics and tissue engineering. However, multiple stimuli-responsiveness with low actuation threshold and high long-term stability is still suspected, because it remains challenging to seamlessly integrate multifunctional elements into LC polymer matrix while maintaining ordered mesogenic alignments. Here, we demonstrate a metal coordination-assisted interfacial polymerization strengthening strategy for the fabrication of a stable and multi-responsive LC actuator with an integrated bilayer architecture through a surface modification combining with two-stage polymerization. Thanks to high heat conduction of the tightly-combined heterogeneous interface and notable photo- and electro-thermal performances of silver nanowires, the resulting actuator can achieve fast light-driven upward arching shape-morphing to 181^o in 2.4 s at a low near-infrared intensity of 0.9 W cm^-2 and strong voltage-tolerant rolled deformation at a bending angle of 400^o over 1000 cycles at 2.2 V. With the copolymerization of hydrophilic chains in LC matrix, the hydrophilic disturbance-triggered anisotropic expansion drives a humidity-responsive actuation. As a top-performing actuator among the previously reported multi-stimuli responsive actuators, diverse smart robots of photo-actuated crawler, electric-powered gripper and electro-humidity driven oscillator are realized. This work promises an opportunity for intelligent soft robotics.
- liquid crystal gels /
- heterogenous interface /
- multi-stimuli responsiveness /
- long-term stability /
- soft robots

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Chen H., Yao X., Qin H., et al. (2025). A highly-stable multi-responsive bimorph liquid crystal actuator with chemically soldered heterogenous interface. The Innovation Materials 3:100144. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-mater.2025.100144

Chen H., Yao X., Qin H., et al. (2025). A highly-stable multi-responsive bimorph liquid crystal actuator with chemically soldered heterogenous interface. The Innovation Materials 3:100144. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-mater.2025.100144

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A highly-stable multi-responsive bimorph liquid crystal actuator with chemically soldered heterogenous interface

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