Graphene-Enabled Superior and Tunable Photomechanical Actuation in Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Nanocomposites

Yingkui Yang; Wenjie Zhan; Rengui Peng; Chengen He; Xinchang Pang; Dean Shi; Tao Jiang; Zhiqun Lin

doi:10.1002/adma.201503680

Graphene-Enabled Superior and Tunable Photomechanical Actuation in Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Nanocomposites

Adv Mater. 2015 Nov 4;27(41):6376-81. doi: 10.1002/adma.201503680. Epub 2015 Sep 21.

Authors

Yingkui Yang^{1

2}, Wenjie Zhan¹, Rengui Peng¹, Chengen He¹, Xinchang Pang², Dean Shi¹, Tao Jiang¹, Zhiqun Lin²

Affiliations

¹ MOE Key Laboratory for Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Organic Chemical Materialsand School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA.

PMID: 26389820
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201503680

Abstract

Programmable photoactuation enabled by graphene: Graphene sheets aligned in liquid crystalline elastomers are capable of absorbing near-infrared light. They thereafter act as nanoheaters and provide thermally conductive pathways to trigger the nematic-to-isotropic transition of elastomers, leading to macroscopic mechanical deformation of nanocomposites. Large strain, high actuation force, high initial sensitivity, fast reversible response, and long cyclability are concurrently achieved in nanocomposites.

Keywords: graphene; liquid crystalline elastomers; nanostructures; photomechanical actuators; photothermomechanical conversion.