Photomobile polymer materials: Towards light-driven plastic motors
Photomobile polymer materials: Towards light-driven plastic motors
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DOI:
10.1002/anie.200800760
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发表时间:
2008-01-01
影响因子:
16.6
通讯作者:
Ikeda, Tomiki
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
Yamada, Munenori;Kondo, Mizuho;Ikeda, Tomiki
As light is a good energy source that can be controlled remotely, instantly, and precisely, light-driven soft actuators could play an important role for novel applications in wideranging industrial and medical fields. Liquid-crystalline elastomers (LCEs) are unique materials having both properties of liquid crystals (LCs) and elastomers,[1–3] and a large deformation can be generated in LCEs, such as reversible contraction and expansion, and even bending, by incorporating photochromic molecules, such as an azobenzene, with the aid of photochemical reactions of these chromophores.[4–12] Herein we demonstrate new sophisticated motions of LCEs and their composite materials: a plastic motor driven only by light.If materials absorb light and change their shape or volume, they can convert light energy directly into mechanical work (the photomechanical effect) and could be very efficient as a single-step energy conversion. Furthermore, these photomobile materials would be widely applicable because they can be controlled remotely just by manipulating the irradiation conditions. LCEs show an anisotropic order of mesogens with a cooperative effect, which leads them to undergo an anisotropic contraction along the alignment direction of mesogens when heated above their LC-isotropic (I) phase transition temperatures (TLC-I) and an expansion by lowering the temperature below TLC-I.[1, 13–18] The expansion and contraction is due to the microscopic change in alignment of mesogens, followed by the significant macroscopic change in order through the cooperative movement of mesogens and polymer segments.