Cytocompatible liquid crystal elastomer fibers for potential application as artificial skeletal or cardiac muscle (opens in new tab)

To biomimetically mimic native muscle tissue new artificial soft actor materials need to be developed that can be processed into fibers and combine high mass-specific work, a sufficiently high contraction capacity, short contraction times, and biocompatibility. In this context, liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) are a promising class of materials that exhibit high actuator performance. Based on a novel spinning method to create MBB-based LCE fibers (LCEF), here we present an artificial muscle fi...