Fig. 5.

Potential applications of arrays of LCE microstructures. (A) Schematic (Left) and experimental realization (Right) of a dynamic adhesion system based on cooperative movements of LCE microplates. The white boxes in the photographs indicate the position of the microstructured epoxy cargo (see Movie S4 and SI Appendix for more details). (B) An information storage system consisting of a stepwise write-in polymerization and a thermally induced readout. (B, Left) The optical appearance of the microstructure array in the undeformed and deformed states. The region H outside the red boundary was polymerized in the first step, using a mask without a magnetic field; the region inside H was polymerized in the second step upon the removal of the mask in the presence of a magnetic field. (B, Right) Confocal fluorescence micrographs of the yellow and green regions of the H pattern, showing different deformation modes of the structures polymerized in the first and second steps. Confocal fluorescence micrographs show different deformation behaviors in the regions polymerized at each step.