Melt electrowriting enabled 3D liquid crystal elastomer structures for cross-scale actuators and temperature field sensors

Abstract

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) have garnered attention for their remarkable reversible strains under various stimuli. Early studies on LCEs mainly focused on basic dimensional changes in macrostructures or quasi–three-dimensional (3D) microstructures. However, fabricating complex 3D microstructures and cross-scale LCE-based structures has remained challenging. In this study, we report a compatible method named melt electrowriting (MEW) to fabricate LCE-based microfiber actuators and various 3D actuators on the micrometer to centimeter scales. By controlling printing parameters, these actuators were fabricated with high resolutions (4.5 to 60 μm), actuation strains (10 to 55%), and a maximum work density of 160 J/kg. In addition, through the integration of a deep learning–based model, we demonstrated the application of LCE materials in temperature field sensing. Large-scale, real-time, LCE grid–based spatial temperature field sensors have been designed, exhibiting a low response time of less than 42 ms and a high precision of 94.79%.