The muscle-like activities of liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) offer great potential for designing future soft machines. Their motion complexity, however, relies on inflexible and cumbersome mesogen alignment techniques. Here, a digital photocuring method for ultrafast template-free fabrication of LCE artificial muscles capable of designable complex motions is reported. This method utilizes the intrinsic light attenuation in the through-plane direction to create mesogen alignment for reversible bending action. To turn this simple actuation into complex motions, the principles of muscles are borrowed which realize diverse motions through the cooperative actions of otherwise simple contraction/expansion of individual muscle bundles. Specifically, the spatiotemporal digital light is utilized to design LCE architectures composed of strategically arranged bending modules. As such, LCE capable of highly designable motions can be fabricated within 25 s light curing without employing any physical alignment templates, which offers an attractive option toward designing functionally diverse soft machines.
Keywords: digital fabrication; liquid crystalline elastomers; responsive polymers.
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