The development of appropriate materials that can make breakthroughs in tissue
engineering has long been pursued by the scientific community. Several types of material …

Starting about a decade ago, researchers began to explore the use of LC networks as a
means of coupling mechanical forces to the mesomorphic character of networks. In so doing …

The principal concepts, preparation methods, important features of liquid crystal elastomers,
anisotropic networks and gels, as well as recent exciting progress in this field are reviewed …

A novel strain-induced transition of the director orientation in a monodomain cross-linked
side-chain liquid-crystal polymer system is reported which is analogous to the Fréedericksz …

Biological tissues have the remarkable ability to remodel and repair in response to disease,
injury and mechanical stresses. Synthetic materials lack the complexity of biological tissues …

Free-standing monodomain liquid crystal elastomer samples are shown to have a complete
memory of the orientational configuration at the time of cross-linking. This memory is …

The processing of a new series of liquid crystalline (LC) epoxy networks was evaluated.
Above the glass transition temperature, the low crosslink density networks could be …

The formation, properties and applications of anisotropic, predominantly liquid-crystalline
(LC), networks are described. These self-assembling systems exhibit macroscopic …

We show that a monodomain chiral smectic C elastomer exhibits a biaxial shape memory
effect, demonstrating its spontaneous and reversible deformation in a heating and cooling …

Today, material science is directed towards the development of multifunctional and oriented
structures. One example of such supramolecular systems are liquid crystalline (LC) …