4D Printing of Freestanding Liquid Crystal Elastomers via Hybrid Additive Manufacturing
Abstract
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) are appealing candidates among active materials for 4D printing, due to their reversible, programmable and rapid actuation capabilities. Recent progress has been made on direct ink writing (DIW) or Digital Light Processing (DLP) to print LCEs with certain actuation. However, it remains a challenge to achieve complicated structures, such as spatial lattices with large actuation, due to the limitation of printing LCEs on the build platform or the previous layer. Herein, a novel method to 4D print freestanding LCEs on‐the‐fly by using laser‐assisted DIW with an actuation strain up to −40% is proposed. This process is further hybridized with the DLP method for optional structural or removable supports to create active 3D architectures in a one‐step additive process. Various objects, including hybrid active lattices, active tensegrity, an actuator with tunable stability, and 3D spatial LCE lattices, can be additively fabricated. The combination of DIW‐printed functionally freestanding LCEs with the DLP‐printed supporting structures thus provides new design freedom and fabrication capability for applications including soft robotics, smart structures, active metamaterials, and smart wearable devices.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 29, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1002/adma.202204890
Entities
People
- Frédéric Demoly
- H. Jerry Qi
- Kun Zhou
- Liang Yue
- Ruike Renee Zhao
- S. Macrae Montgomery
- Shuai Wu
- Xiaohao Sun
- Xirui Peng
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Georgia Tech
- Nanyang Technological University
- National Science Foundation
- Stanford University