Reconfigurable wrinkles of a patterned liquid crystal network coating activated by polarized light

A geometrically nonlinear model is developed to explore photo-induced wrinkling of a patterned liquid crystal network (LCN) coating consisting of striped domains with orthogonal director alignments. The inhomogeneous coating is replaced by an equivalent homogeneous plate with distributed eigenstrain...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of non-linear mechanics 2025-03, Vol.170, Article 104983
Main Authors: Qian, W.X., Ni, Y., He, L.H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Patterned LCN coating
Polarized light
Reconfigurable wrinkles
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Summary:A geometrically nonlinear model is developed to explore photo-induced wrinkling of a patterned liquid crystal network (LCN) coating consisting of striped domains with orthogonal director alignments. The inhomogeneous coating is replaced by an equivalent homogeneous plate with distributed eigenstrains, and the large deflections activated by linearly polarized UV light are solved numerically via a kinetic approach. It is found that substantially different wrinkling modes can be formed when the intensity and polarization direction of the light as well as the width of the domains are changed. The results demonstrate a contactless way to create reconfigurable surface topographies. •Reconfigurable wrinkling topography of patterned liquid crystal network coatings on soft elastic substrates controlled by linearly polarized light is explored.•A numerical approach is developed to solve the large-deflection equations of the coatings which exhibit inhomogeneous and anisotropic elastic properties.•Different wrinkling modes of the coatings are found when the polarization direction and intensity of the incident light are continuously changed.
ISSN:0020-7462
DOI:10.1016/j.ijnonlinmec.2024.104983