MACROMOLECULAR CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
·
2024
·Vol. 225
·期 22
·2400235
·
IF 2.5
Mulenga Kalulu,Christopher Mwanza,Onesmus Munyati,Jun Hu,Shephrah O. Ogungbesan,Guodong Fu
Anisotropic bilayer hydrogel actuators are high-performance materials engineered to exhibit unique and programmable mechanical properties, including varying stiffness and directional bending capabilities, by integrating two hydrogel layers with distinct responses to stimuli. However, programming and constructing these bilayer hydrogels remains challenging due to their lack of mechanical robustness, rapid responsiveness, and dual-actuation capabilities, which hinder their practical applications and further development. Hence, developing a double-actuating bilayer hydrogel with a temperature-responsive and auxiliary layer could address these challenges. Herein, an anisotropic hydrogel actuator is developed using a simple and economical casting method, in which a unique multiasymmetric bilayer structure locked by an interfacial is fabricated. The as-prepared hydrogels demonstrate exceptional temperature-responsive bending abilities, achieving a 360 °C angle in just 8 s, and exhibit adaptive, complex shape transformation capabilities tailored to specific needs (e.g., two dimensional (2D) letters, leaves, flower, and butterfly hydrogel). Furthermore, the hydrogels possess excellent shape memory, mechanical strength, and conductivity. Additionally, gripper and humidity alarm prototypes made from the hydrogel are also successfully developed, illustrating that this approach opens new avenues for designing and producing smart hydrogels with practical applications in sensors, smart humidity alarms, and on-demand smart grippers and actuators.
研究领域:
材料科学
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智能材料
·
传感器技术
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
高影响因子
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE
·
2021
·Vol. 56
·期 29
·16324-16338
·
IF 4.22
Gao Qiaofeng,Pan Pengju,Shan Guorong,Du Miao
Smart hydrogels have attracted widespread attention and have displayed comprehensive applications in many fields. The development of a novel type of bilayer hydrogel with synergistic function of anisotropic deformation and photochromic property is extremely challenging. Many previous researches have focused on multiple response hydrogels. However, it hardly achieves the synergy of deformation and color-changing through a method with the advantages of simplicity, stability, practicality, and precise control. Herein, a near-infrared light (NIR) photothermal thermoresponsive graphene oxide/poly( N -isopropylacrylamide- β -cyclodextrin) (PNIPAM- β -CD/GO) hydrogel layer and a reversible photochromic ammonium molybdate tetrahydrate/poly( N -isopropylacrylamide- co - β -cyclodextrin) (PNIPAM- β -CD/Mo 7 ) hydrogel layer were combined to obtain a bilayer hydrogel through the host–guest interactions between β -CD and the isopropyl group of NIPAM, exhibiting integrate anisotropic shape deformation and reversible photochromic behaviors. The designed actuators can undergo complex deformation owing to volume shrinkage caused by the photothermal effect under NIR of the PNIPAM- β -CD/GO layer, while the PNIPAM- β -CD/Mo 7 hydrogel layer shows the characteristics of quickly color changing within 5 s when irradiated by a UV light source. The multiple responsiveness of hydrogels on temperature, NIR irradiation, and UV irradiation displays valuable advantages in multifunctional smart materials, such as intelligent soft robots. Graphical abstract
研究领域:
材料科学
·
化学工程
·
生物医学工程
✓ 已验证
DOI
高影响因子
Gels
·
2023
·Vol. 9
·期 6
·438
·
IF 4.6
Chao Ma,Shuyi Peng,Lian Chen,Xingyu Cao,Ye Sun,Lin Chen,Lang Yang,Chunming Ma,Qijie Liu,Zhenzhong Liu,Shaohua Jiang
Stimuli-responsive color-changing and shape-changing hydrogels are promising intelligent materials for visual detections and bio-inspired actuations, respectively. However, it is still an early stage to integrate the color-changing performance and shape-changing performance together to provide bi-functional synergistic biomimetic devices, which are difficult to design but will greatly expand further applications of intelligent hydrogels. Herein, we present an anisotropic bi-layer hydrogel by combining a pH-responsive rhodamine-B (RhB)-functionalized fluorescent hydrogel layer and a photothermal-responsive shape-changing melanin-added poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) hydrogel layer with fluorescent color-changing and shape-changing bi-functional synergy. This bi-layer hydrogel can obtain fast and complex actuations under irradiation with 808 nm near-infrared (NIR) light due to both the melanin-composited PNIPAM hydrogel with high efficiency of photothermal conversion and the anisotropic structure of this bi-hydrogel. Furthermore, the RhB-functionalized fluorescent hydrogel layer can provide rapid pH-responsive fluorescent color change, which can be integrated with NIR-responsive shape change to achieve bi-functional synergy. As a result, this bi-layer hydrogel can be designed using various biomimetic devices, which can show the actuating process in the dark for real-time tracking and even mimetic starfish to synchronously change both the color and shape. This work provides a new bi-layer hydrogel biomimetic actuator with color-changing and shape-changing bi-functional synergy, which will inspire new strategies for other intelligent composite materials and high-level biomimetic devices.
研究领域:
材料科学
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化学
·
仿生学
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智能材料
·
执行器
✓ 已验证
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
危险品化学品经营许可证（带存储）