Optically-driven Reversible Deformations in Nematic Liquid Crystal Polymer Networks

Abstract

The bending behavior of the polydomain liquid crystal polymer (LCP) plate upon linear polarized light is studied. Considering the photoisomerization and light absorption process, we obtain the photo strains in polydomain LCPs by using the Mori-Tanaka mean field method. We found that under the irradiation of light, effective bending moments will be produced. The bending moments are affected by the direction of polarized light. The bending behaviors of plates with different boundary conditions are studied. The recent experimental phenomena such as directionally dependent bending of polydomain films can be effectively described in our results.