Contact topology in locally UV-cured LCE/CNT for optical logic

Single CNT-LCE strip realizes multiple Boolean functions via patterned contacts. • Fully soft 1-bit full adder experimentally validated for all eight inputs. • Layout reduces physical units for full adder from 18 to 8 (∼56% reduction). • CNT photothermal actuation yields fast, repeatable bending and reliable contacts. • Scaling to 7 bits shows unit-count savings approaching two orders of magnitude. Light-responsive soft materials have intrinsic advantages for remote actuation and programmable control, therefore widely used in intelligent soft systems. However, existing logic units that rely on light-induced bending still face limits in unit size, freedom of interconnection, and direct realization of complex logic. Here, we propose a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) logic unit based on local UV-curing to form logic gates by controlled light-induced bending. By designing the geometry of the contact paths between the material and the circuit, a single-material unit can realize OR, AND, XOR, and XNOR functions under different contact configurations. Furthermore, a full adder constructed with this method reduces the number of logic gates by 66.7% and 55.56% compared with gate counts optimized by SSoP and Quine–McCluskey SoP (QMSoP), respectively. This method provides a scalable pathway for realizing optical logic circuits across different scales and physical platforms, making it suitable for applications such as soft robotics and self-deploying structures. Download: Download high-res image (101KB) Download: Download full-size image