Liquid Crystal Elastomer and Fabric Bilayer Actuators

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are a promising class of responsive materials for shape-morphable structures due to their large deformation, tunable properties, and low power consumption. It is well-known that by laminating a contracting LCE with an inert but flexible material layer, bending actuation can be achieved. We report a method to fabricate thermoresponsive LCE and fabric bilayer actuators and characterize their utility as bending actuators. We find that the use of different strain-limiting fabrics yields varying actuation outputs and curvatures, which we discover to be reliant on the interfacial adhesion of the bilayer, rather than the stiffness of the strain-limiting layer. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed LCE-fabric bending actuator in a soft robotic gripper. The findings herein can be applied to the design of LCE and fabric bilayer structure patterns to realize complex and programmable out-of-plane morphing.