Chiral-mechanical transitions in topologically imprinted elastomers

Abstract

We extend a previous model for chirally imprinted monodomain nematic elastomers to allow a director rotation (by an angle pi/2-theta) towards the pitch axes of the imprinted helices. We find that provided the rubber matrix is allowed to spontaneously deform, the director array will make use of this additional degree of freedom, relaxing into a conical state in both the low and high imprinting efficiency regimes. Consequently, the transition between the regimes of differing imprinting efficiency is coupled to angle theta. This interdependence is nontrivial and involves discontinuous director rotation at the transitions.