Silver Coated Multifunctional Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Polymeric Composites as Electro-Responsive and Piezo-Resistive Artificial Muscles.

Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) are a class of shape-changing polymers with exceptional mechanical properties and potential as artificial muscles/polymer actuators. In this study, multifunctional LCE actuators with strain sensing and joule heating responsivity are developed. LCEs are successfully synthesized using the thiol-ene two-staged michael addition polymerization (TMAP) method.