Issue 8, 2023

Bioinspired humidity-responsive liquid crystalline materials: from adaptive soft actuators to visualized sensors and detectors

Abstract

Inspired by nature, humidity-responsive materials and devices have attracted significant interest from scientists in multiple disciplines, ranging from chemistry, physics and materials science to biomimetics. Owing to their superiorities, including harmless stimulus and untethered control, humidity-driven materials have been widely investigated for application in soft robots, smart sensors and detectors, biomimetic devices and anticounterfeiting labels. Especially, humidity-responsive liquid crystalline materials are particularly appealing due to the combination of programmable and adaptive liquid crystal matrix and humidity-controllability, enabling the fabrication of advanced self-adaptive robots and visualized sensors. In this review, we summarize the recent progress in humidity-driven liquid crystalline materials. First, a brief introduction of liquid crystal materials, including liquid crystalline polymers, cholesteric liquid crystals, blue-phase liquid crystals and cholesteric cellulose nanocrystals is provided. Subsequently, the mechanisms of humidity-responsiveness are presented, followed by the diverse strategies for the fabrication of humidity-responsive liquid crystalline materials. The applications of humidity-driven devices will be presented ranging from soft actuators to visualized sensors and detectors. Finally, we provide an outlook on the development of humidity-driven liquid crystalline materials.

Graphical abstract: Bioinspired humidity-responsive liquid crystalline materials: from adaptive soft actuators to visualized sensors and detectors

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
15 Kul 2023
Accepted
08 Mud 2023
First published
09 Mud 2023

Mater. Horiz., 2023,10, 2824-2844

Bioinspired humidity-responsive liquid crystalline materials: from adaptive soft actuators to visualized sensors and detectors

R. Lan, W. Shen, W. Yao, J. Chen, X. Chen and H. Yang, Mater. Horiz., 2023, 10, 2824 DOI: 10.1039/D3MH00392B

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements