Photonic Fibrous Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators

Photonic fibrous soft actuators that can modulate light and produce responsive deformation would have broad technological implications in areas, ranging from smart textiles and intelligent artificial muscles to medical devices. However, creating such multifunctional soft actuators has proved tremendously challenging. Here, we report novel cholesteric liquid crystal elastomer (CLCE) based photonic fibrous soft actuators (PFSAs). CLCE can serve as chiral photonic soft active material and allow for multiresponse in shapes and colors. We leveraged a tubular-mold-based processing technology to prepare fibrous CLCE actuators, and the prepared actuators exhibit the capabilities to dynamically switch structural colors and geometrical shapes by mechanical, temperature, or light stimuli. CLCE-based PFSAs demonstrate diverse functionalities, including visual weight feedback, optically driven object manipulation, and light driven locomotion. It is anticipated that our PFSAs would offer many new possibilities for developing advanced soft actuators.