Electromechanically Responsive Liquid Crystal Elastomer Nanocomposites for Active Cell Culture

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• 作者：Aditya Agrawal ; Huiying Chen ; Hojin Kim ; Bohan Zhu ; Oluwatomiyin Adetiba ; Andrea Miranda ; Alin Cristian Chipara ; Pulickel M. Ajayan ; Jeffrey G. Jacot ; Rafael Verduzco
• 刊名：ACS Macro Letters
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：December 20, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：5
• 期：12
• 页码：1386-1390
• 全文大小：433K
• ISSN：2161-1653

文摘

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are unique among shape-responsive materials in that they exhibit large and reversible shape changes and can respond to a variety of stimuli. However, only a handful of studies have explored LCEs for biomedical applications. Here, we demonstrate that LCE nanocomposites (LCE-NCs) exhibit a fast and reversible electromechanical response and can be employed as dynamic substrates for cell culture. A two-step method for preparing conductive LCE-NCs is described, which produces materials that exhibit rapid (response times as fast at 0.6 s), large-amplitude (contraction by up to 30%), and fully reversible shape changes (stable to over 5000 cycles) under externally applied voltages (5–40 V). The electromechanical response of the LCE-NCs is tunable through variation of the electrical potential and LCE-NC composition. We utilize conductive LCE-NCs as responsive substrates to culture neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVM) and find that NRVM remain viable on both stimulated and static LCE-NC substrates. These materials provide a reliable and simple route to materials that exhibit a fast, reversible, and large-amplitude electromechanical response.