Plenary Lectures and VIP Guests

Dr. Hyun Kim

Abstract:

Programmable, stimuli-responsive materials are of significant interest for soft robotics, adaptive electronics, and wearable or implantable biomedical devices as promising alternatives to conventional rigid mechanical and electronic systems. Among them, liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) offer unique advantages by converting external stimuli into large, reversible, and programmable deformations through the coupling of molecular anisotropy and rubber elasticity. This presentation highlights our recent advances in functional LCE materials, spanning molecular patterning, semicrystalline network engineering, composite architectures, and intelligent device integration. Topics focus on semicrystalline network engineering in LCEs, enabling reversible two-order-of-magnitude changes in mechanical modulus. The incorporation of crystalline domains in LCEs further enables electrically driven LCE composite fibers for reconfigurable artificial muscles and photochemically driven LCE springs for underwater robotic actuators. Collectively, these advances illustrate how molecular order programming, anisotropic network design, and advanced processing strategies can be integrated to expand the role of functional stimuli-responsive polymeric materials in next-generation intelligent robotics, adaptive electronics, and sustainable technologies.