Photo-thermo-mechanically actuated bending and snapping kinetics of liquid crystal elastomer cantilever

Abstract

A composite of liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) incorporated with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can convert absorbed photon energy into thermal energy to trigger the phase transition of the LCE, resulting in photo-thermo-mechanically actuated devices. We model the transient temperature distribution and the bending kinetics of a straight cantilever beam actuator under the radiation of a laser diode (LD) light. Three possible bending modes of the beam for various LD light powers are identified. The temperature distribution and the bending modes are found to be in good agreement with the reported experimental observations. The underlying deformation mechanisms and bending modes are manifested by probing the stress evolution and propagation of nonzero stress regions during the bending process. For a beam that is initially slightly curved, we also predict the possibility of snap-through instability, and three typical phases of snapping are captured. This procedure paves the way for the design of LCE-based soft actuators.