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ALICE - light-Activated high-performance actuators by electrospinning of reversibly crosslinked LIquid CrystallinE networks

Photoresponsive Liquid Crystalline Networks (LCNs) convert light into mechanical energy to realize reversible and complex shape changes, exploitable in soft robotics, actuators, surface haptics, photo-controlled microfluidic and artificial muscles. More specifically, they can generate large and reversible actuation through a liquid crystal-isotropic phase transition. Massive leaps forwards have been made in the design of new materials to achieve very complex and sophisticated 3D movements but further improvements are required, especially to get: 1) easier approaches to control the orientation of liquid crystal domains; 2) LCNs designed to be more compatible with commonly used polymer processing; 3) reprogrammable and reshapable LCNs. In this project, we will exploit photoresponsive LCNs processed by electrospinning, which we propose as a scalable and straightforward technology capable of both improving actuation performance and simplifying the manufacturing step of mesogen orientation. Together with traditional covalently crosslinked LCNs, new reshapable and reprocessable LCNs based on dynamic H-bonds will be developed.