Polarization Dependent Light‐Driven Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators Based on Photothermal Effect

Abstract Light‐driven liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) have drawn a great deal of attention as one kind of the most attractive and exciting soft active materials because of their wide application in biomimetic devices, artificial muscles, sensors, and soft robotics. Recently, photothermal effect based LCE actuators have emerged as a promising material with features of biocompatibility, high tissue penetration ability, and the ease and flexibility in materials design. However, to achieve polarized light‐driven LCE actuators, where the polarization can serve as an additional manipulation degree of freedom for actuators manipulation, is still a challenge. Herein, a strategy of constructing a linearly polarization dependent light‐driven soft actuator based on dichroic dye (DD) doped LCEs is demonstrated. Three polarization‐dependent photothermal effect based LCE actuators, including oscillators, bionic dog swinging tail, and light‐mill are experimentally investigated for the first time. The polarization of light is proved to perform as controlling parameter and provides an additional degree of freedom to photothermal effect based light‐driven LCE actuators besides the wavelength and intensity of light. The DD‐doped LCE actuator with good polarization dependence shows great potential applications in soft robotics and biomimetic field.