Liquid crystalline networks: from reactive mesogen design to the development of artificial muscles and micrometric actuators

Soft smart materials like Liquid Crystalline Networks (LCNs) attracted the attention of the scientific community for application in many fields, such as tissue engineering, robotics, and encryption. Indeed, their properties and response to stimuli can be tailored for the need of each specific application by a molecular approach, namely the copolymerization of different reactive monomers.The use of different reactive mesogens is also a powerful tool to adjust the polymer performances in terms of force development under stimulation, kinetics of actuation, elasticity, and resistance to specific loads.