Plasma‐Induced Polymerizations: A New Synthetic Entry in Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators

Bin Ni (1) , Mengxue X Zhang (1) , Cédric M Guyon (1) , Patrick Keller (2) , Michael H Tatoulian (1) , Min-Hui Li (1)

1 IRCP - Institut de Recherche de Chimie Paris
2 PCC - Laboratoire Physico-Chimie Curie [Institut Curie]

The research on soft actuators including liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) becomes more and more appealing at a time when the expansion of artificial systems is blooming. Among the various LCE actuators, the bending deformation is often in the origin of many actuation modes. Here, a new strategy with plasma technology is developed to prepare single‐layer main‐chain LCEs with thermally actuated bending and contraction deformations. Two distinct reactions, plasma polymerization and plasma‐induced photopolymerization, are used to polymerize in one step the nematic monomer mixture aligned by magnetic field. The plasma polymerization forms cross‐linked but disoriented structures at the surface of the LCE film, while the plasma‐induced photopolymerization produces aligned LCE structure in the bulk. The actuation behaviors (bending and/or contraction) of LCE films can be adjusted by plasma power, reaction time, and sample thickness. Soft robots like crawling walker and flower mimic are built by LCE films with bending actuation.

Mots clés: Liquid crystal elastomer; Plasma; Magnetic field; Thermomechanical; Soft robots

Domaines: Polymères

Bin Ni, Mengxue X Zhang, Cédric M Guyon, Patrick Keller, Michael H Tatoulian, et al.. Plasma‐Induced Polymerizations: A New Synthetic Entry in Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators. Macromolecular Rapid Communications, 2020, 41 (19), pp.2000385. ⟨10.1002/marc.202000385⟩. ⟨hal-03051790⟩