Liang Huan, Zhang Yubai, He Enjian, Yang Yang, Liu Yawen, Xu Hongtu, Yang Zhijun, Wang Yixuan, Wei Yen, Ji Yan
The Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Phosphorus Chemistry & Chemical Biology (Ministry of Education), Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, Beijing, 100083, China.
Adv Mater. 2024 Jul;36(29):e2400286. doi: 10.1002/adma.202400286. Epub 2024 May 15.
Inspired by adaptive natural organisms and living matter, soft actuators appeal to a variety of innovative applications such as soft grippers, artificial muscles, wearable electronics, and biomedical devices. However, their fabrication is typically limited in laboratories or a few enterprises since specific instruments, strong stimuli, or specialized operation skills are inevitably involved. Here a straightforward "cloth-to-clothes-like" method to prepare soft actuators with a low threshold by combining the hysteretic behavior of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) with the exchange reaction of dynamic covalent bonds, is proposed. Due to the hysteretic behavior, the LCEs (resemble "cloth") effectively retain predefined shapes after stretching and releasing for extended periods. Subsequently, the samples naturally become soft actuators (resemble "clothes") via the exchange reaction at ambient temperatures. As a post-synthesis method, this strategy effectively separates the production of LCEs and soft actuators. LCEs can be mass-produced in bulk by factories or producers and stored as prepared, much like rolls of cloth. When required, these LCEs can be customized into soft actuators as needed. This strategy provides a robust, flexible, and scalable solution to engineer soft actuators, holding great promise for mass production and universal applications.
受适应性自然生物体和生物材料的启发，软驱动器吸引了各种创新应用，如软夹钳、人造肌肉、可穿戴电子设备和生物医学设备。然而，由于不可避免地涉及特定仪器、强刺激或专业操作技能，它们的制造通常局限于实验室或少数企业。在此，提出了一种简单的“布到类布”方法，通过将液晶弹性体（LCE）的滞后行为与动态共价键的交换反应相结合，以低阈值制备软驱动器。由于滞后行为，LCE（类似于“布”）在长时间拉伸和释放后有效地保持预定义形状。随后，样品在环境温度下通过交换反应自然地变成软驱动器（类似于“衣服”）。作为一种合成后方法，该策略有效地分离了LCE和软驱动器的生产。LCE可以由工厂或生产商批量生产并按制备好的状态储存，就像布卷一样。当需要时，这些LCE可以根据需要定制成软驱动器。该策略为设计软驱动器提供了一种强大、灵活且可扩展的解决方案，在大规模生产和广泛应用方面具有巨大潜力。
