Liquid Crystalline Elastomers

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Abstract
Today, material science is directed towards the development of multifunctional and oriented structures. One example of such supramolecular systems are liquid crystalline (LC) elastomers which combine the properties of LC phases (the combination of order and mobility) with rubber elasticity, one of the most typical polymer properties. Their most outstanding characteristic is their mechanical orientability; strains as small as 20% are enough to obtain a perfectly oriented LC monodomain. This orientability, if LC elastomers with chiral phases are used, leads, for example, to elastomers with chiral smectic C* phases which are likely to show piezo‐electric behavior.