4D Printing of Freestanding Liquid Crystal Elastomers via Hybrid Additive Manufacturing

• DOI: 10.1002/adma.202204890
• Publication Date: 2022-08-13T12:40:27Z
• Authors: Xirui Peng; Shuai Wu; Xiaohao Sun; Liang Yue; S. Macrae Montgomery; Frédéric Demoly; Kun Zhou; Ruike Renee Zhao; H. Jerry Qi
• Keywords: Digital Light Processing; Soft Robotics; Smart material

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) print LCEs with certain actuation. However, it remains a challenge achieve complicated structures, such as spatial lattices large actuation, the limitation of printing build platform previous layer. Herein, novel method freestanding on-the-fly by using laser-assisted DIW an strain up -40% is proposed. This process further hybridized DLP optional structural removable supports create 3D architectures in one-step additive process. Various objects, including hybrid lattices, tensegrity, actuator tunable stability, LCE can be additively fabricated. The combination DIW-printed functionally DLP-printed supporting structures thus provides new design freedom fabrication capability applications soft robotics, smart metamaterials, wearable devices.