Switching shapes of nematic elastomers with various director configurations

We review our recent studies for various types of thermally driven deformations of nematic elastomers (NEs) such as elongation, contraction, bending, spiral and helical deformations. The shape of NEs is very sensitive to a change in local nematic order as a result of pronounced coupling of rubber elasticity and molecular orientational order. A variety of the types of director configurations such as planar, vertical, hybrid and twist alignments lead to various types of thermal deformation. The inhomogeneous thermal deformations such as bending, spiral and helical deformations are quantitatively predictable from the data of the thermal uniaxial deformation of the corresponding NE with planar alignment on the basis of the continuum elastic theories.