Programmable Photoresponsive Main-chain Liquid Crystal Elastomers Prepared by a Two-stage Thiol-acrylate Reaction
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Liquid crystal elastomers(LCEs) have been used as various stimuli-responsive polymers due to extraordinary changes in shape, soft-elasticity behavior, and tunable optical properties in response to a stimulus such as heat or light. For example, liquid crystal polymers using azobenzene, which is a photosensitive material, have a property of changing structure and shape in response to light. In this study, di-acrylated crosslinkers with a long azobenzene core is synthesized to easily achieve high orientation order. We introduced a two-stage thiol-acrylate michael addition-photopolymerization reaction to prepare main-chain azo-LCEs. The first stage reaction is used to create a polydomain LCEs via the thiol michael addition reaction, then second-stage photopolymerization reaction between excess acrylate groups is used to permanently fix an aligned monodomain. This photoresponsive main-chain LCEs can be potentially useful for artificial muscles, sensors, and actuators.