Light-powered liquid crystal polymer network actuator using TiO2 nanoparticle as an inorganic UV-light absorber

Recently design and fabrication of light-powered actuators have attracted intense attention because of the manufacturing of intelligent soft robots and innovative self-regulating devices. Accordingly, liquid crystal polymer network (LCN) provides a promising platform due to its reversible and multistimuli- responsive shape-changing behaviors. In particular, doping nanoparticles with exclusive properties into the LCN can produce interesting results. In this work, we investigated the TiO₂ nanoparticle-based LCN polymer light-powered actuator. TiO₂ nanoparticle as an inorganic ultraviolet (UV)-light absorber can substantially impact the LCN polymer’s oscillatory behavior. Our results demonstrate that the oscillation characteristics are directly influenced by the presence of nanoparticles and we studied the influencing factors. The effectiveness of the elastic modulus, thermomechanical force, and curvature was investigated using different weight percentages of TiO2 nanoparticles. Our results show that in the presence of TiO₂ nanoparticles, the polymer chain order and inter-chain interactions in the polymer matrix, as well as the structural deformation of relevant polymer surfaces, are changed.