A team from Harvard University has invented flexible materials that can respond autonomously to light and other stimuli, paving the way for solar panels that follow the sun. Researchers have developed new, bio-inspired materials that can move in response to different stimuli. The materials—called liquid-crystal elastomers (LCEs)—could be used to develop solar panels that can automatically rotate to follow the sun, as well as be applied to robotics, adhesives, and other next-generation applications. Key to the research of scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are magnetic fields, which they used to control the molecular structure of LCEs. In this way, they created microscopic, three-dimensional polymer shapes that can be programmed to move in any direction in response to multiple types of stimuli, according to a Wyss news release.
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