A team led by Associate Professor Wang Li from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Xi'an Jiaotong University has developed a novel 3D printing technology utilizing melt electrospun fluids, enabling the fabrication of soft actuators for liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) ranging from micrometer to centimeter scales. Researchers have crafted various macro-micro cross-scale structured soft actuators responsive to thermal stimuli. They've also pioneered the application of LCE materials in temperature field detection, devising an integrated environment temperature field sensor that combines machine vision with deep learning models. Their recent findings have been published in Science Advances.
The melt electrospun fluid 3D printing technology operates by applying a high-voltage direct current electric field at the tip of a metal needle, generating a cone jet that deposits onto a substrate. Through the coordinated movement of the substrate in three axes, the jet is stacked layer by layer to form macro-micro cross-scale structures. This process precisely deposits LCE microfibers of varying diameters along specified paths, thus realizing unit microstructures with thermally induced strain properties. In testing, a surface-mount inductor, weighing 33 times the weight of the printed micro gripper, was used to evaluate its gripping capability. Results demonstrate that the printed micro gripper can easily grasp/release microsensor devices under cyclic heating/cooling stimuli.
High-precision manufacturing of programmable liquid crystal elastomer three-dimensional microstructures has long been a challenge. The melt electrospun fluid 3D printing technology offers a low-cost, large-scale, high-resolution manufacturing process to address this challenge.
The fabrication of macro- and microscale structures using 3D printing of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) under electric field.
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