Ionic liquid crystal elastomers for actuators, sensors, and organic transistors

In this paper, we discuss the preparation and several electrical properties of two ionic Liquid Crystal Elastomers. We show that iLCEs can be used as electric actuators, bending sensors and as solid electrolytes of organic electrochemical transistors. We summarise the results using one type of LCE and two types of ionic liquids. It is found that the ionic liquid that phase separates from the reactive mesogenic monomers and forms micron size ionic channels performs better than the less phase separating ionic liquid. The switching time of the order of a second was found to be possible using the ionic liquid with smaller ions and larger channels. These results provide many exciting opportunities in various areas and impact future applications, although they are far from optimised. Fine tuning of the high-performance iLCEs require an intricate compatibility between the LCE and the electrodes and appears to be laborious. On the other hand, the first promising results justify the efforts to study more type of liquid crystal elastomers, ionic liquids and compliant electrodes.