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This research demonstrates a novel approach to create reconfigurable optical properties in smart materials, suggesting enhanced device capabilities.
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) hold great promise for smart devices, but their permanent polymer networks create a trade-off between mechanical robustness and optical reconfigurability by restricting mesogen reorientation. Herein, this conflict is resolved via a molecular nanocomposite design: incorporating tailor-made liquid-crystalline block copolymer photoresponsive nanodomains into a side-chain LCE matrix. The microphase-separated nanostructure provides confined yet sufficient free volume for azobenzene isomerization, directing cooperative realignment of photoinert LCE mesogens. This enables reversible, in situ optical writing/erasing of diverse alignments without alignment layers, translating to programmable photomechanical bending. We demonstrate multilevel information encryption devices using this capability. This nanostructure-dictated photomanipulation strategy decouples reconfigurability from network stability, offering a general pathway for advanced intelligent soft matter in adaptive optics, soft robotics, and secure systems.
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Jin et al. (2026) studied this question.
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