2025/12/02 by Kutsyy, Alice, Wihardja, Adeline, Lee, Victoria +1
#FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.05146
Nematic elastomers are a particular class of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) that exhibit both liquid-crystalline order and rubber (entropic) elasticity. This combination makes them stimuli-responsive soft materials with a number of unusual thermo-mechanical properties. They have been proposed for various applications, including soft robotics, enhanced adhesion, and impact resistance. This paper presents a new experimental setup and a comprehensive dataset characterizing the soft behavior of nematic elastomers over a range of temperatures and strain rates. We also fit the results to a recently developed model of nematic elastomers.