The motivation for Israel's experiments were to understand the physical properties of this new materials, measure the individual refractive indices (ne and no) of a nematic liquid crystal elastomer, and finally to determine how this refractive indices change as a function of strain
Sarah investigated the swelling dynamics of a nematic LCE film immersed in a binary solvent system. The experiments followed the change in dimension of an LCE submerged in varying concentrations of hexane and toluene.
Jun continued Sarah's investigated on the swelling dynamics of a nematic LCE film immersed in a binary solvent system. Jun desgined and machined a new solvent chamber allowing simultaneous measurement of changes in length and width of the LCE film.
