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Memory and Development of Textures of Polydomain Nematic Elastomers
Author(s) -
Higaki Haruko,
Urayama Kenji,
Takigawa Toshikazu
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
macromolecular chemistry and physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.57
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1521-3935
pISSN - 1022-1352
DOI - 10.1002/macp.201200239
Subject(s) - texture (cosmology) , elastomer , liquid crystal , schlieren , materials science , isotropy , optics , condensed matter physics , rotation (mathematics) , composite material , physics , geometry , mathematics , computer science , image (mathematics) , artificial intelligence
The texture development during the polydomain‐to‐monodomain (PM) transition in nematic elastomers with isotropic (I‐PNE) or nematic genesis (N‐PNE) is studied. I‐PNE exhibits a uniform polydomain texture, and the PM transition occurs at a constant small force, resulting in a uniform monodomain texture. N‐PNE exhibits the Schlieren texture that is composed of large domains with many defects and is similar to that before cross‐linking. N‐PNE requires much more mechanical work than I‐PNE for the PM transition. In N‐PNE, remnants of the initial texture are still observed in the stretched aligned state, while the initial texture and dimensions are completely restored when the imposed strain is removed. The permanent memory of the initial texture becomes a robust constraint to the rotation of the local directors.