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Updated: May 18, 2026

Microfluidic Preparation of Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Actuators
Published on: May 20, 2018
Phenomenological theory of isotropic-genesis nematic elastomers
Bing-Sui Lu1, Fangfu Ye, Xiangjun Xing
1Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Abstract:
We consider the impact of the elastomer network on the nematic structure and fluctuations in isotropic-genesis nematic elastomers, via a phenomenological model that underscores the role of network compliance. The model contains a network-mediated nonlocal interaction as well as a new kind of random field that reflects the memory of the nematic order present at network formation and also encodes local anisotropy due to localized nematogenic polymers. This model enables us to predict regimes of short-ranged oscillatory spatial correlations (thermal and glassy) in the nematic alignment.
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