Porous Conductive AgNW-Composited Liquid Crystalline Elastomer for Self-Sensing Soft Actuators

Soft robotics faces a significant challenge in integrating actuating and sensing capabilities within the materials. In this study, we propose a novel approach for creating porous conductive liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) actuators via a sugar-templated method. The resulting actuators demonstrate exceptional photothermal responsiveness, enabling remote actuation controlled by near-infrared light (NIR). The porous structure of the actuator contributes to superior biaxial actuation strains, achieving approximately 40% in the x-axis and 140% in the z-axis. Meanwhile, the porous actuator not only sustains and senses large deformations across various modes but also responds to environmental changes by exhibiting corresponding variations in the electrical resistance. Furthermore, we leverage the unique properties of the porous conductive liquid crystal sponges to design smart self-adaptive actuators, including an adaptive photovoltaic system and intelligent surfaces, which actively perceive external environmental stimuli and autonomously regulate their shape transformation by monitoring and analyzing electrical signals. This work exhibits significant advancement in the development of artificial intelligent systems with enhanced autonomy and complexity.