A cut-and-paste strategy towards liquid crystal elastomers with complex shape morphing

Nowadays, with the rapid progress in soft robotics and aerospace technology, novel soft actuator materials with reversible and complex shape morphing capabilities, such as helical curling, buckling, accordion-like folding, self-oscillating, waving and other three-dimensional motion modes, are highly desirable. In this manuscript, we report a new cut-and-paste method to construct liquid crystal elastomer actuators with complex shape morphing by combining dynamic covalent chemistry with the traditional surface-treated liquid crystal cell preparation strategy. In brief, we synthesize monodomain liquid crystal elastomer films with exchangeable disulfide crosslinkers through in situ photopolymerization in anti-parallel surface-rubbed cells, cut the obtained uniaxial-aligned liquid crystal elastomer films into pieces and paste them together via dynamic disulfide exchange to form versatile shaped soft actuator materials.