Employing light to direct functional responses in photoresponsive polymeric materials and composites is potentially advantageous as it is wireless and extremely rapid.  Furthermore, the intensity, phase, and polarization of light can be easily modulated into complex spatial patterns with holography (intensity or polarization) or masking (intensity or phase).  Deriving from these foundational properties of light, photoresponsive macromolecular systems exhibit exceeding potential to yield rapid and highly engineered macroscopic as well as spatially selectable mechanically adaptive responses useful as soft actuators or topographical surfaces in aerospace, automotive, and biomedical applications.  This talk will discuss our recent work generating both shape fixing (shape memory) and shape restoring (elastic) responses in a variety of photoresponsive polymeric materials.   Particular emphasis will be placed on the generation of topographical features in liquid crystalline polymer networks.

Wireless mechanical adaptivity: Photomechanical effects in azobenzene-functionalized polymeric materials

245th National Meeting (2013)

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