Granting Intelligence to Liquid Crystal Actuators through Electricity
Mert Orhan Astam defended his PhD thesis at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry on the 23rd of January 2025.
As technology becomes increasingly integrated within our daily lives, the number of interactions between humans and machines are bound to soar. Hence, it is crucial that our robots are not only safe, but can also engage in human-like and intelligent interactions. In his thesis, Mert Orhan Astam works towards achieving this with liquid crystal polymers (LCPs), compositing them with responsive additives to induce complex learning and forgetting functions within a soft polymer.
An actuator within a polymer film
LCPs offer the opportunity for a radically different type of actuator that utilises the collective motion of molecules to achieve deformation instead of regular magnetic and electric motor effect. As a result allows for much smaller, and also fully soft, actuators, which are ideal for human interactive functions. Furthermore, the advanced processing methods for biocompatible LCPs allows for the material to be synthesized in a broad range of configurations, ranging from free-films to substrate-bound coatings; this sets the precedent for the simple integration of LCPs for all sorts of device applications, ranging from medical wearables to artificial organs.
Learning how to teach materials
The actuation mechanism of LCPs grant it a natural level of material intelligence, enabling its actuation to be programmed to respond in the desired manner under selected conditions, such as a certain level of heat or light. In his work, Mert uses spiropyran additives to induce light-based material memory behaviour, while integrating flexible polymer circuit boards into our material during synthesis to build an untethered system with localized addressability of LCP actuator material.
Application-oriented research
The functions Mert pursues in his work entails a material-to-device investigations, aiming to bring the impact of LCP technology to society. Therefore, he modifies LCP responsivity through additives and flexible circuitry enable electrical driving, increasing the suitable of LCP devices for the electronic framework of modern devices. Furthermore, Mert showcases his results as practical demonstrators that portray how LCPs can be used as haptic wearables, self-regulating switches, and untethered adaptive switchboards. He adopts this working mentally to establish the foundation for the further development of functional LCPs towards devices in subsequent research to maximize the social impact of his results. LCPs have the potential to become the material for artificial organs and the soft medical robotics of the future.