Jull, EIL orcid.org/0000-0003-3228-1348, Mandle, RJ orcid.org/0000-0001-9816-9661, Raistrick, T orcid.org/0000-0002-6227-6550 et al. (3 more authors) (2022) Toward In Silico Design of Highly Tunable Liquid Crystal Elastomers. Macromolecules. ISSN 0024-9297
Abstract
In this work, a two-component acrylate liquid crystal elastomer, with varying composition and templating phase, is synthesized in the laboratory and investigated in parallel using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations. The anisotropic nature of both the mono- and bifunctional acrylates used in this study enables a large tunability in the compositional range while still retaining liquid crystalline properties in the final elastomer. The use of simulations allows important evaluation and comparison of physical properties such as glass transition temperature, nematic to isotropic phase transition temperature, and order parameter. The dependence of physical properties (glass transition, nematic to isotropic transition, order parameter, coefficient of thermal expansion, and mechanical properties) is established as a function of chemical composition, showing a high degree of tunability. Interestingly, the templating phase (nematic or isotropic) is also shown to impact the subsequent elastomer properties, with excellent agreement shown here between experiments and simulations. The in silico approach to polymerization, coupled with excellent comparison with the experimental system, represents a new methodology for the targeted design of liquid crystal elastomers with specific physical properties.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Physics and Astronomy (Leeds) > Soft Matter Physics (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 30 May 2022 12:19 |
Last Modified: | 15 Jan 2025 15:10 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | American Chemical Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c00587 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:187403 |