Buckling instability in liquid crystalline physical gels

作者：Verduzco R^*; Meng GN; Kornfield JA; Meyer RB

来源：Physical Review Letters, 2006, 96(14): 147802.

DOI：10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.147802

In a nematic gel we observe a low-energy buckling deformation arising from soft and semisoft elastic modes. We prepare the self-assembled gel by dissolving a coil-side-group liquid-crystalline polymer-coil copolymer in a nematic liquid crystal. The gel has long network strands and a precisely tailored structure, making it ideal for studying nematic rubber elasticity. Under polarized optical microscopy we observe a striped texture that forms when gels uniformly aligned at 35 degrees C are cooled to room temperature. We model the instability using the molecular theory of nematic rubber elasticity, and the theory correctly captures the change in pitch length with sample thickness and polymer concentration. This buckling instability is a clear example of a low-energy deformation that arises in materials where polymer network strains are coupled to the director orientation.

• 出版日期2006-4-14