Related papers: A theoretical model for power generation via liqui…
The urge for efficient and environmentally friendly alternatives for the current gas-based refrigeration is becoming more critical due to global warming and overpopulation. Among the main candidates, solid-state-based cooling technology is…
Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…
Achieving control and tunability of lyotropic materials has been a long-standing goal of liquid crystal research. Here we show that the elasticity of a liquid crystal system consisting of a dense suspension of semiflexible biopolymers can…
We develop a molecular model of non-uniform deformations within the framework of liquid crystal rubber elasticity. We show that, similarly to the uniform case, the theory is not sensitive to the molecular details of polymer liquid crystal…
Liquid crystal elastomers represent a novel class of programmable shape-transforming materials whose shape change trajectory is encoded in the material's nematic director field. Using three-dimensional nonlinear finite element…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubber-like solids with liquid crystalline mesogens (stiff, rod-like molecules) incorporated either into the main chain or as a side chain of the polymer. These solids display a range of unusual…
We compute the $\Gamma$-limit of energy functionals describing mechanical systems composed of a thin nematic liquid crystal elastomer sustaining a homogeneous and isotropic elastic membrane. We work in the regime of infinitesimal…
A Landau theory is constructed for the vulcanization transition in cross-linked polymer systems with spontaneous nematic ordering. The neo-classical theory of the elasticity of nematic elastomers is derived via the minimization of this…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
For nearly a century, introduction of nanoparticles to elastomers has yielded extraordinarily tough nanocomposites that are critical to technologies from actuators to tires. The mechanisms by which this reinforcement occurs have…
Amorphous elastomers exhibit significant rate-stiffening and unique viscous flow characteristics across a wide range of strain rates, often undergoing glass transition above a strain rate threshold. We have developed a…
We model polydomain liquid-crystal elastomers by extending the neo-classical soft and semi-soft free energies used successfully to describe monodomain samples. We show that there is a significant difference between polydomains cross-linked…
Azo-containing liquid crystal elatomers are photomechanical materials which can be actuated by illumination. The photomechanical response is a result of the photoisomerization of the azo moiety, which produces bulk stresses in the material.…
A thermodynamically related model is developed for describing elastic rubber-like behavior of amorphous and crystallizing polymers and demonstrated on example of simple extension. Both the “entropic” and “energetic”…
We consider planar liquid crystal elastomers: two dimensional objects made of anisotropic responsive materials, that upon activation remain flat however change their planar shape. We derive a closed form, analytical solution based on the…
The first part of this paper develops a theory for the free energy of lyotropic polymer nematic liquid crystals. We use a continuum model with macroscopic elastic moduli for a polymer nematic phase. By evaluating the partition function,…
We consider a continuum model of active viscoelastic matter, whereby an active nematic liquid-crystal is coupled to a minimal model of polymer dynamics with a viscoelastic relaxation time $\tau_C$. To explore the resulting interplay between…
The flexoelectric conversion of mechanical to electrical energy in nematic liquid crystals is investigated using continuum theory. Since the electrical energy produced cannot exceed the mechanical energy supplied, and vice-versa, upper…
Liquid crystalline polymers are materials of considerable scientific interest and technological value to society [1-3]. An important subset of such materials exhibit rubber-like elasticity; these can combine the remarkable optical…