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Progress in Chemistry 2022, Vol. 34 Issue (1): 168-177 DOI: 10.7536/PC210354 Previous Articles   Next Articles

• Review •

Liquid Crystal Elastomers Based Soft Robots

Meng Wang(), Jianfeng Yang   

  1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southeast University,Nanjing 211189, China
  • Received: Revised: Online: Published:
  • Contact: Meng Wang
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(52173109); National Natural Science Foundation of China(51903048)
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As a hot robot research direction, soft robots have potential applications in many fields, such as the operation of small objects in limited space, due to the advantages including many degrees of freedom, excellent adaptability and flexible contact. As a classical smart material, liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are very promising to be the suitable candidate for preparing the soft robots owing to the large and reversible shape deformations in response to external stimuli (heat, light, electric or magnetic field, humidity, etc.). Due to the changes of microscopic orders or molecular structures of uniaxial-aligned mesogens, the whole LCE materials can execute very large and reversible macroscopic actuation during the LC-to-isotropic phase transition process. At present, according to different driving modes, the research of LCE-based soft robots mainly focuses on the thermal-driven soft robots, light-driven soft robots, electro-driven soft robots, magnetic-driven soft robots and humidity-driven soft robots. This article reviews the developments of LCE-based soft robots, and also introduces the main different driving modes and related LCE-based soft robot systems in detail. Besides, the article further provides a view of prospective development in the future for LCE-based soft robots.

Contents

1 Introduction

2 Thermal-driven liquid crystal elastomer based soft robot

3 Light-driven liquid crystal elastomer based soft robot

3.1 Crawling soft robots

3.2 Rolling soft robots

3.3 Swimming soft robots

4 Electro-driven liquid crystal elastomer based soft robots

4.1 Carbon conductive material/liquid crystal elastomer based soft robot

4.2 Metal conductive material/liquid crystal elastomer based soft robot

4.3 Conductive polymer material/liquid crystal elastomer based soft robot

5 Liquid crystal elastomer based soft robots driven by other stimuli

6 Conclusion and outlook

Key words: soft robot, liquid crystal elastomer, smart material, shape memory
Fig. 1 Two-way shape memory behavior of LCEs under external stimuli
Fig. 2 Eight different thermal-induced shape changes of soft robots[41]
Fig. 3 The precise multi-directional motion of soft robots under different near-infrared lights[48]
Fig. 4 The serpentine locomotion of a snake-mimic soft robot under near-infrared light[50]
Fig. 5 The rolling soft robot based on kirigami[52]
Fig. 6 A swimming micro-robot driven by ultraviolet light[56]
Fig. 7 The electro-driven cylinder soft robot based on liquid crystal elastomer/carbon black composite film[67]
Fig. 8 The walking and pushing modes of the soft robot under the electric field[68]
Fig. 9 The grabbing and lifting motions of the soft robot[70]
Fig. 10 The magnetic-induced spontaneous movement of the soft robot[75]
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