Synthesizing carbon dots (CDs) with efficient long-wavelength emissions (i.e., yellow-to red light) generally suffer from sophisticated approaches, time-consuming process, harsh conditions, and requirement of organic solvent ; also, a further limitation of the resulting CDs is relatively low quantum yield (QY) in aqueous solution. Herein, novel yellow emitting CDs (Y-CDs) with a considerable QY of 62.8% were synthesized from a precursor comprising resorcinol and o-phenylenediamine via a facile microwave method. To probe the fluorescence mechanism, another typical resorcinol-derived CDs using ethylenediamine as dopant were fabricated as well, showing strong green emission with an absolute QY of 60.6%. Spectroscopic and structural characterizations indicated that the distinct redshift of green to yellow emission depended on the dimension of conjugated sp 2 -domain and the content of graphitic N heavily, while the excellent QY was highly related to the low proportion of defective sp 2 carbon cluster and high nitrogen content within CDs. Moreover, the Y-CDs were confirmed to be capable of introducing additional crosslinking points in poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) polymer, which resulted in the Y-CDs-contained nanocomposite behaving superior and tunable water-induced shape recovery performances. Importantly, since being labeled with long-wavelength emission, the responsiveness of PVA/Y-CDs composite will contribute to its versatile utilization in biology-relevant fields.
Chi Chen,Yangyuanchen Liu,Ximin He,Hua Li,Yujie Chen,Ying Wei,Yusen Zhao,Yanfei Ma,Zhen Chen,Xu Zheng,Hezhou Liu
In the field of bionic soft robots and microrobots, artificial muscle materials have exhibited unique potential for cutting-edge applications. However, current mainstream thermal-responsive artificial muscles based on semicrystalline polymers (SCPs), despite their excellent physical properties, suffer from the limitation of environmental stimuli in practice, while their photodriven counterparts adopting liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) lack ductility. Herein, a novel multifunctional programmable artificial muscle with a unique patch-sewing structure formed by π–π stacking between azobenzene groups was designed, which combined the advantages of SCPs and LCEs. The nanocomposite demonstrated a unique combination between artificial muscle performance (46.5 times the energy density and 26.6 times the power density of human skeletal muscles) and programmability (274.84% strain and 100% shape-memory recovery rate within 1 s). Meanwhile, coupling the photoisomerization of azobenzene and the photothermal conversion of gold nanorods, the cycle of deformation triggered by ultraviolet light and restoring by infrared light could be accomplished rapidly within 30 s. A COMSOL Multiphysics model was established and the corresponding finite element analysis verified the photoactuation and captured the general principle of light initiation in elastomers. These demonstrate that the multifunctional programmable elastomer is promising for artificial muscle applications, especially for photoinduced actuation.