Liquid-Crystal-Elastomer-Actuated Reconfigurable Microscale Kirigami Metastructures

Mingchao Zhang, Hamed Shahsavan, Yubing Guo, Abdon Pena-Francesch, Yingying Zhang, Metin Sitti*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

63 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Programmable actuation of metastructures with predesigned geometrical configurations has recently drawn significant attention in many applications, such as smart structures, medical devices, soft robotics, prosthetics, and wearable devices. Despite remarkable progress in this field, achieving wireless miniaturized reconfigurable metastructures remains a challenge due to the difficult nature of the fabrication and actuation processes at the micrometer scale. Herein, microscale thermo-responsive reconfigurable metasurfaces using stimuli-responsive liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) is fabricated as an artificial muscle for reconfiguring the 2D microscale kirigami structures. Such structures are fabricated via two-photon polymerization with sub-micrometer precision. Through rationally designed experiments guided by simulations, the optimal formulation of the LCE artificial muscle is explored and the relationship between shape transformation behaviors and geometrical parameters of the kirigami structures is build. As a proof of concept demonstration, the constructs for temperature-dependent switching and information encryption is applied. Such reconfigurable kirigami metastructures have significant potential for boosting the fundamental small-scale metastructure research and the design and fabrication of wireless functional devices, wearables, and soft robots at the microscale as well.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2008605
JournalAdvanced Materials
Volume33
Issue number25
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Jun 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • kirigami
  • liquid crystal elastomers
  • reconfigurable metastructures
  • two-photon polymerization
  • wireless microscale devices

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