Light-powered self-spinning of a button spinner

A light-powered self-rotating liquid crystal elastomer drill

“…Based on stimuli-responsive materials, including liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) [ 28 ], ionic gels [ 29 , 30 ], hydrogels [ 31 , 32 ], etc., diverse self-oscillating systems have been widely developed recently. Especially, there have been numerous attempts to construct a large number of self-sustained motion patterns, such as vibration [ 33 ], bending [ 34 , 35 ], rolling [ [36] , [37] , [38] ], spinning [ 39 ], torsion [ 40 ], shuttling [ 41 ], self-oscillating auxetic metamaterials [ 42 ], self-floating [ 43 ] and self-curling [ 44 ], shrinking [ 45 ], swimming [ 46 ], swinging [ 16 , 47 ], buckling [ 48 , 49 ], jumping [ 50 , 51 ], rotation [ 52 , 53 ], chaos [ 54 ] and even synchronized motion of coupled self-oscillators [ 55 ]. In these self-oscillating systems, some special mechanisms are generally required for absorbing energy from the external environment to compensate for the dissipation consumed by the system damping [ 1 ].…”

Self-Sustained Euler Buckling of an Optically Responsive Rod with Different Boundary Constraints

“…In recent years, various self-oscillating systems based on different stimuli-responsive materials have been constructed, such as thermally responsive polymer materials [ 14 ], hydrogels [ 15 , 16 ], ion gels [ 17 ], dielectric elastomer [ 18 ], liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) [ 19 , 20 ], etc. Meanwhile, a variety of self-sustained motion modes have been proposed, such as rolling [ 4 , 7 , 21 ], bending [ 22 , 23 ], vibration [ 24 , 25 ], torsion [ 25 , 26 ], stretching and shrinking [ 27 , 28 ], spinning [ 29 ], swinging [ 30 ], buckling [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ], jumping [ 35 , 36 , 37 ], rotation [ 38 ], snap-through [ 39 ], eversion or inversion [ 40 ], expansion and contraction [ 26 , 41 , 42 ], swimming [ 43 , 44 ], and even group behavior coupled by two asymmetric oscillators [ 45 ]. In order to compensate for the energy loss of self-sustained oscillation caused by damping dissipation, different self-feedback mechanisms have been proposed, such as self-shadowing mechanism [ 41 ], coupling mechanism among chemical diffusion, large deformation and chemical reaction [ 46 ], and multi process coupling mechanism among droplet evaporation, motion, and plate buckling [ 47 ].…”

Self-Sustained Oscillation of Electrothermally Responsive Liquid Crystal Elastomer Film in Steady-State Circuits

“…A rich variety of Self-excited oscillation systems constructed based on active materials have been recently reported, such as hydrogels [20,21], dielectric elastomers, ionic gels [22,23], liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) [24][25][26][27][28][29] and temperature-sensitive polymers [30][31][32][33]. At the same time, researchers have proposed and constructed different Self-excited oscillation patterns based on various types of active materials, such as bending [30][31][32], flexing, twisting [33,34], stretching and contracting [35], rolling [36], swimming, oscillating, vibrating [37][38][39], jumping [40][41][42], rotating [43], turning outward or reversing, and even the synchronized motion of several coupled Self-oscillators. Owing to the damping effect of systems, Self-excited oscillation consumes energy during motion, so it usually originates from nonlinear feedback mechanisms that compensate for the damping consumption of a system through energy input [44][45][46], such as the Self-shadowing mechanism [36,47], the coupling mechanism of chemical reaction and large deformation [22], and the coupling motion mechanism of air expansion and liquid column [48,49].…”