Cytocompatible liquid crystal elastomer fibers for potential application as artificial skeletal or cardiac muscle

To biomimetically mimic native muscle tissue new artificial soft actor materials need to be developed that can be processed into fibers and combine high mass-specific work, a sufficiently high contraction capacity, short contraction times, and biocompatibility. In this context, liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) are a promising class of materials that exhibit high actuator performance. Based on a novel spinning method to create MBB-based LCE fibers (LCEF), here we present an artificial muscle fiber capable of performing mass specific work of up to 31.2 J kg^-1 while activation time was as fast as 0.466 s, resulting in an average mass specific power of 45.88 ± 23.75 W kg^-1, thus to this extend mimicking skeletal muscle characteristics. Cell cytotoxicity assays were performed and compared to RM82-based LCEF from literature, showing that for the first time a cytocompatible LCEF was generated. Thus, the here presented actuator fibers offer great potential for future application in tissue engineering, e.g., as artificial skeletal or cardiac muscle.