Charlie Lindberg

Charlie’s current research involves the synthesis and characterization of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) containing dynamic covalent bonds. The multi-responsive nature of these materials, which includes properties like shape-memory and bulk reprocessability, lends them to a wide array of applications ranging from soft robotics to biomedical devices. By tailoring the chemical structure of a liquid crystal monomer before its polymerization into an LCE, it is possible to tune the specific stimuli-responsive character of a material toward a desired application while control over the nature of the dynamic bond allows for the modification of bulk network properties including modulus and stress relaxation.