[15a-416-1~10] 12.3 Functional Materials and Novel Devices

[15a-416-5] Frequency Dependence of Electric Field Deformation of Liquid Crystal Elastomer

〇Hirotaka Okabe¹, Yuta Kadoyanagi¹, Sinya Kawano¹, Yoshiki Hidaka¹, Kazuhiro Hara¹ (1.Kyushu Univ.)

Keywords:liquid crystal elastomer, frequency dependence, side chain

Liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) consists of mesogenic units incorporated to the polymer network. When the mesogenic units turn by applying electric field, the network is trailed and the LCE deforms. Therefore, LCEs are expected to the soft matter actuator for many fields. In this study, we investigated the dependency between the frequency of the applied electric field and the deformation of the LCEs. The LCEs are driven by AC electric field because the higher DC field induces the decomposition of liquid crystal molecules. The deformation increased according to the increase of the frequency, and was saturated at higher frequency. We think this dependency is explained by the small amplitude oscillation of the mesogenic units. The oscillation of the deformation wasn’t observed, but the oscillation of mesogenic units consume the electric energy and decrease the mechanical deformation.