Recently, the research group of Prof. Xu Lin and Prof. Ding Jianning from School of Mechanical Engineering of Jiangsu University (JSU), in collaboration with Associate Prof. Tao Ran from Beijing Institute of Technology and Prof. Christian Franck from University of Colorado, achieved a breakthrough in addressing the long-standing limitation of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), whose thermally induced deformation is typically constrained by high actuation thresholds (generally above 80 °C). Through interdisciplinary efforts, the team successfully developed a novel body-temperature-driven, hyper-tensile LCE with outstanding performance. This work, entitled Body temperature actuated liquid crystal elastomers from hyper tensile preprogramming, was published in the prestigious international journal Advanced Functional Materials. Prof. Xu Lin, Prof. Tao Ran, and Prof. Christian Franck served as co-corresponding authors, while graduate students Chen Zhu and Samuel were co-first authors. The School of Mechanical Engineering of JSU was listed as the first affiliation.

The study introduced an innovative helical preprogramming orientation technique, employing a two-stage thiol–acrylate Michael addition reaction, to fabricate hyper-tensile LCEs with pre-strains up to 2500%, surpassing the conventional strain limits of traditional LCEs. Particularly notable, the resulting LCE-25 actuator demonstrated excellent low-temperature actuation capability, substantially reducing the required operating threshold. A deformation speed of 16.75°/s was achieved under actuation temperatures as low as 25–33 °C, corresponding to the range of human body temperature.

(Source: School of Mechanical Engineering)