Driving Performance of Liquid Crystalline Actuators Available to Purchase

We have experimentally investigated the driving performance of liquid crystalline actuators, which are recently proposed for micro-actuators. In our experiment, the liquid crystalline material (5CB) is placed between two glass plates with surface orientation treatment. When a pulsed electric field is applied between the plates, the liquid crystalline molecules alternately exhibit clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, inducing the flow of the material. This flow is the source of the actuator drive. For the practical use of the liquid crystalline actuators, one must have the information of the performance of the actuators, such as the motion trajectory, driving speed, driving force, and so on. These performances strongly depend on voltage, frequency and duty ratio of the pulsed electric field. From the results, it is found that the driving speed and driving force can be controlled by these input factors. The maximum driving force is relatively large compare to the other micro-actuators.