Stimuli-responsive liquid crystalline materials

Stimuli-responsive materials which respond to triggers from the environment by changing their properties are one of the focal points in materials science. For precise functional properties, well-defined hierarchically ordered supramolecular materials are crucial. The self-assembly of liquid crystals has proven to be an extremely useful tool in the development of well-defined nanostructured materials. Liquid crystalline materials are appealing for making responsive materials since microscopic changes in the molecular order and orientation can lead to macroscopic changes in shape, optical properties, or porosity. By using photopolymerizable liquid crystals a wide variety of stimuli-responsive materials can be made from a relatively simple set of building blocks. Upon mixing different (reactive) mesogens, nematic, chiral nematic, and smectic liquid crystalline phases can be formed that can be applied as soft actuators, responsive optical materials and tunable nanoporous materials, respectively.