ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
·
2022
·
IF 10.383
Weiyi Zhao,Yunlei Zhang,Xiaoduo Zhao,Zhongying Ji,Zhengfeng Ma,Xiangsheng Gao,Shuanhong Ma,Xiaolong Wang,Feng Zhou
Natural articular cartilages show extraordinary tribological performance based on their penetrated surface lubricated biomacromolecules and good mechanical tolerance. Hydrogels are considered to be potential alternatives to cartilages due to their low surface friction and good biocompatibility, although the poor mechanical properties limited their applications. Inspired by the excellent mechanical properties and the remarkable surface lubrication mechanism of natural articular cartilages, one kind of cartilage-like composite material with a lubrication phase (Composite-LP) was developed by chemically grafting a thick hydrophilic polyelectrolyte brush layer onto the subsurface of a three-dimensional manufactured elastomer scaffold–hydrogel composite architecture. The Composite-LP exhibited good load-bearing capacities because of the nondissipation strategy and the stress dispersion mechanism resulting from the elastomer scaffold enhancement. In the presence of the top lubrication layer, the Composite-LP showed superior friction reduction functionality and wear resistance under a dynamic shearing process. This design concept of coupling the non-dissipative mechanism and interface lubrication provides a new avenue for developing cartilage-like hydrogels and soft robots.
研究领域:
生物医学工程
·
材料科学
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
Micromachines
·
2021
·Vol. 12
·期 9
·1016
·
IF 2.891
Zhou Zhou,Manman Xu,Chenlin Zhu,Gonghan He,Kunpeng Zhang,Daoheng Sun
A control chip with a multistage flow-rate regulation function based on the correlation between the flow resistance and flow rate has been developed in this article. Compared with the traditional proportional solenoid valve, this kind of flow valve based on microfluidic technology has the characteristics of being light-weight and having no electric drive. It solves such technical problems as how the current digital microfluidic chip can only adjust the flow switch, and the adjustment of the flow rate is difficult. To linearize the output signal, we propose a design method of weighted resistance. The output flow is controlled by a 4-bit binary pressure signal. According to the binary value of the 4-bit pressure signal at the input, the output can achieve 16-stage flow adjustment. Furthermore, we integrate the three-dimensional flow resistance network, multilayer structure microvalve, and parallel fluid network into a single chip by using 3D printing to obtain a modular flow control unit. This structure enables the microflow control signal to be converted from a digital signal to an analogue signal (DA conversion), and is suitable for microflow driving components, such as in microfluidic chip sampling systems and proportional mixing systems. In the future, we expect this device to even be used in the automatic control system of a miniature pneumatic soft actuator.Keywords:microfluidic;soft robotics;hydraulic actuators;analog circuits
研究领域:
微流体技术
·
机器人学
✓ 已验证
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
·
2022
·
IF 10.383
Chuan Wei Zhang,Weifeng Zou,Hai Chao Yu,Xing Peng Hao,Guorui Li,Tiefeng Li,Wei Yang,Zi Liang Wu,Qiang Zheng
The design of soft robots capable of navigation underwater has received tremendous research interest due to the robots’ versatile applications in marine explorations. Inspired by marine animals such as jellyfish, scientists have developed various soft robotic fishes by using elastomers as the major material. However, elastomers have a hydrophobic network without embedded water, which is different from the gel-state body of the prototypes and results in high contrast to the surrounding environment and thus poor acoustic stealth. Here, we demonstrate a manta ray-inspired soft robot fish with tailored swimming motions by using tough and stiff hydrogels as the structural elements, as well as a dielectric elastomer as the actuating unit. The switching between actuated and relaxed states of this unit under wired power leads to the flapping of the pectoral fins and swimming of the gel fish. This robot fish has good stability and swims with a fast speed (∼10 cm/s) in freshwater and seawater over a wide temperature range (4–50 °C). The high water content (i.e., ∼70 wt %) of the robot fish affords good optical and acoustic stealth properties under water. The excellent mechanical properties of the gels also enable easy integration of other functional units/systems with the robot fish. As proof-of-concept examples, a temperature sensing system and a soft gripper are assembled, allowing the robot fish to monitor the local temperature, raise warning signals by lighting, and grab and transport an object on demand. Such a robot fish should find applications in environmental detection and execution tasks under water. This work should also be informative for the design of other soft actuators and robots with tough hydrogels as the building blocks.
研究领域:
仿生学
·
软体机器人
·
材料科学
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
·
2022
·
IF 10.383
Tingting Wang,Xiaotong Fan,J. Justin Koh,Chaobin He,Chen-Hua Yeow
Soft robotics is a rapidly evolving research field that focuses on developing robots with bioinspired actuation/sensing mechanisms and highly flexible soft materials, some of which are similar to those found in living organisms. The hydrogel has the characteristics of excellent biocompatibility, softness, and elasticity, which makes it an ideal candidate material for the preparation of soft robots. Here we utilized a self-healing approach to develop a catalytically driven soft robot, which was constructed by dynamic imine bonds between modular hydrogels. One of the modules was a hydrogel formed by dynamic aldimine cross-linking of chitosan and glutaraldehyde, and the other module was a hydrogel embedded with catalase. The soft hydrogel robot moved because of catalytic reactions between the robot and environment [hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) fuel], giving rise to a fluidic release that supports propulsion, as inspired by the jet-propulsive mechanism in swimming dragonfly larvae. The speed of the soft robot can be mediated by adjusting the concentration of H2O2 and enable/disable movement based on the folding and unfolding of enzymes. In addition, the hydrogel formed by replacing glutaraldehyde with dialdehyde-functionalized PEG2000 had excellent elastic properties, and the soft robot based on PEG2000 had a higher movement speed than that based on glutaraldehyde under the same H2O2 concentration. Moreover, the addition of iron oxide nanoparticles can realize the magnetic guidance of the soft robot and the combination of different modules can realize different motion modes. The highly configurable self-healing catalytic soft robot holds great potential for a variety of interesting applications, including swimming robots, robot-assisted water treatment, and drug release.
研究领域:
软体机器人
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生物材料
·
仿生学
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
Advanced Materials Technologies
·
2021
·Vol. 7
·期 6
·2101260
·
IF 7.848
Wei Liao,Zhongqiang Yang
Integration of multiple functions into a simple unit can simplify the device design and facilitate the miniaturization and portability of soft robots. Actuating and sensing functions are the basis of soft robots to interact with the environment. In this work, a modified melt-spinning method is used to produce liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fibers with a hollow structure and fill the core with liquid metal (LM) to construct LCE–LM coaxial fibers with integrated sensing and actuation functions. The inner LM generates Joule heat upon an electrical trigger to actuate the outer LCE shell. When LCE–LM coaxial fibers are actuated or loaded with objects, the deformation of LCE shell forces the inner LM to reform, allowing to sense the motion of the fibers or the mass of objects, by measuring the feedback voltage or resistance change of the inner LM. Benefitting from the material selection and structural design, the LCE–LM coaxial fibers with integrated actuating and sensing capability exhibit large reversible contraction (40%) and reliable durability (5000 cycles for actuation and motion sensing). Finally, a soft three-arm Delta robot is fabricated to complete object identification, sorting tasks, and in situ monitoring the motion process.
研究领域:
材料科学
·
机器人学
✓ 已验证
DOI
高影响因子
ACS Nano
·
2024
·
IF 15.8
Hao Zhu,Tie Li,Lei Fu,Ju Bai,Shengzhao Li,Yuanyuan Bai,Shihao Deng,Shen Yuan,Qianzuo Liu,Yunping Ma,Lu Peng,Jingyi Xu,Nan Ma,Guanggui Cheng,Jianning Ding,Ting Zhang
Smart fibers capable of integrating the multifunctionality of actuation and self-sensation into a single proprioceptive device have significant applications in soft robots and biomedicine. Especially, the achievement of self-sensing the movement patterns of different actuating segments in one fiber is still a great challenge. Herein, in this study, a fiber with the controllable Janus architecture is successfully proposed via an artful centrifugation-driven hierarchical gradient self-assembly strategy, which couples two functional components of piezoresistive carbon nanotubes and magnetic NdFeB nanoparticles into the upper and lower layers of this flexible fibrous framework with the porous sponge structure partially, respectively. As predicted, the final product exhibits the as-anticipated bionic proprioceptive behaviors of programmable actuating deformation and highly selective response to bending, stretching, and pressure with high washable stability and mechanical performances. More importantly, assisted by the different three-dimensional printing molds, the superlong Janus fibers with various controllable lengths of the reversed but sequential multistage segments can be fabricated, offering the hybrid magnetic actuation and proprioceptive sensation existing at arbitrary nodes. Therefore, several kinds of soft organism-inspired Janus fiber-derived soft robots with the arbitrarily controlled segmental characters were assembled as the proof-of-concept, which can not only realize a snake or inchworm-inspired successive contracting-stretching deformation and a sperm-inspired self-rotating crawling motion but also self-sense the signals of each segment themselves in real time and then be used to navigate an object to target position in a liquid-filled confined tube. It is believed that this work promotes the further development of proprioceptive soft robots.
研究领域:
材料科学
·
仿生学
·
生物医学工程
✓ 已验证
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
ACS Applied Polymer Materials
·
2025
·
IF 4.7
Kehui Xiang,Hanxin Jian,Zexin Liu,Yunpeng Yang,Hao Huang,Shuguang Yang
Actuating fibers are characterized by their flexibility and capacity for further knitting and weaving. They exhibit rapid stimuli response, satisfying diverse practical applications. The pH-actuating fibers are typically prepared from weak negative polyelectrolytes, contracting in acid and extending in alkali, while weak positive polyelectrolytes can be used to construct fibers with inverse pH-actuating behaviors. Herein, we fabricate an “alkaline contraction and acid extension” actuating fiber, utilizing the biobased weak positive polyelectrolyte chitosan (CHI). To address the issues of CHI fiber dissolution at low pH values and its inherent brittleness, covalent cross-linking and toughening are introduced to produce the actuating fiber. The fiber performs work in response to pH variations with a maximum output strain of 62%, work density of 20 kJ/m3, and modulus of 215 MPa, which are all higher than those of human skeletal muscle, and can be assembled into devices with other kinds of fiber actuators to perform complex motions, holding a promising role in soft robots and biomedicines.
研究领域:
材料科学
·
生物医学工程
·
化学工程
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
高影响因子
Nature Communications
·
2025
·Vol. 16
·期 1
·1-10
·
IF 15.7
Wang Xin,Xia Neng,Pan Chengfeng,Zhao Jinsheng,Hao Bo,Su Lin,Jin Dongdong,Xu Qingsong,Liu Xurui,Hou Xingyu,Zhang Li
Water surface jumping motions of semi-aquatic insects are primarily rely on surface tension-dominated jumping mechanism to achieve impressive jumping performance. However, this mechanism faces an inherent physical constraint: the propulsion force must remain below the threshold required to break the water surface, limiting efficient momentum acquisition. Herein, we present a water surface jumping strategy that addresses the limitations of surface tension-dominated mechanism. Our approach allows the engineered jumper to achieve a record-breaking jumping height of 18 body lengths (63 cm) and take-off velocity of 100.6 body length/s (3.52 m/s). This strategy is built on three key design principles: (I) superhydrophobic body for floating on water surface, (II) light-weight, high-power actuation module capable of providing significant propulsion force within an ultrashort time, (III) well-engineered momentum transmission system for efficient kinetic energy transfer. The developed soft jumper based on these design principles advances the development of water environment related robotics.
研究领域:
仿生学
·
机器人学
·
流体力学
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
Additive Manufacturing
·
2024
·
IF 10.3
Youchao Zhang,Xiaoyang Zhu,Huangyu Chen,Ruichen Wang,Siqi Qiu,Houchao Zhang,Hongke Li,Zhenghao Li,Rui Wang,Fan Zhang,Guangming Zhang,Yuan-Fang Zhang,Dong Wang,Hongbo Lan
Reconfigurable magnetic soft machines have a wide range of applications in soft robotics, aerospace, medical devices and flexible electronics. However, the high-precision reconfiguration of magnetically actuated soft machines is hindered by the absence of rational structural design and integrated manufacturing techniques. Here, we report an innovative design and manufacturing approach to realize magnetically actuated high-precision reconfigurability. We present a crease-assisted pixelated design using a mixture of magnetic particles and phase-change medium as the pixel points, with an elastomer as the crease to connect the pixel points, simulating origami. The design of elastomer creases improves pixel stiffness without loss of reconfigurable accuracy, thereby significantly improves the magnetic particle concentration in the pixel. An effective multi-material 3D printing technique is used to achieve the integrated printing of the designed structure. The resulting magnetically actuated soft machines exhibit remarkable capabilities, achieving small curvature bending and precise reconfiguration with weaker actuating magnetic fields (100mT). The superior performance of this design has been confirmed through demonstrations of crawling and rolling machines, magnetically controlled switches, and logic circuits. The work enhances the reconfiguration accuracy of magnetically actuated soft machines, increasing their potential for soft robotics and flexible electronics applications.
研究领域:
软体机器人学
·
柔性电子
·
材料科学
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
高影响因子
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
·
2023
·
IF 9.5
Huijing Li,Long Li,Hao Zhang,Junjie Wei,Zhenyu Xu,Tao Chen
To make soft robotics intelligent, dazzling artificial skin and actuators have been created. However, compared to rigid commercial robots, the sophisticated demands of raw materials become a key challenge for autonomous soft actuators to realize manufacturing repeatability and reproducibility. Inspired by the stem cell, which has the potential to differentiate into multifunctional cells with the same original compositions, a potential multifunctional gel is presented. With well-designed polymer chains, the gel has a salt-induced regulating module, conductivity, and other bionic properties. Making use of this advantage, the gel acts as a double-duty electrode for both the actuator and sensor. An artificial reflex arc is therefore formed by their tight integration via an e-brain: a computing unit that specifically responds to organism intervention. This efficient strategy to obtain diverse components with minimal raw materials is promising for effortlessly fabricating fully soft robotics.
研究领域:
材料科学
·
生物工程
·
机器人学
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
PubMed
高影响因子
SENSORS AND ACTUATORS B-CHEMICAL
·
2025
·
IF 7.7
Liyang Jing,Yiheng Song,Shuyan He,Xinming Fu,Zhengliang Du,Xianze Yin
The investigation of Marangoni effect-driven actuators holds significant importance due to their wide-ranging applications in smart devices and biomedical fields. However, traditional Marangoni hydrogel actuators often lack spontaneity and are difficult to control. In this study, we designed and prepared a dual-mode driven Marangoni hydrogel actuator (DDMA) which combines the spontaneity of solvent exchange-based hydrogel actuators with the controllability of photothermal-based ones. DDMA not only exhibits excellent ethanol loading capacity but also demonstrates both sustained motion for approximately 21 minutes and rapid motion. Furthermore, controlled motion can be achieved under infrared light, by adjusting the illumination point, the hydrogel can navigate through complex N-shaped mazes and achieve turning angles exceeding 180°. This spontaneously controllable potential of hydrogel motion holds great promise in the field of intelligent transportation and soft robotics technology.
研究领域:
智能材料
·
生物医学工程
·
软体机器人技术
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
高影响因子
ADVANCED FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS
·
2024
·
IF 18.5
Jing Guo,Ruihui Liu,Yuezi Lv,Hui Xie,Shaobing Zhou
Shape-morphing hydrogels can mimic the dynamism of living creatures and are popular for designing soft machines, such as actuators and robots. However, most existing shape-morphing hydrogels present a single morphing pathway between two shapes, sequential and multistage shape-morphing in real scenarios has rarely been captured. Although a strategy that assembles functional hydrogel components has been reported, it is likely to simultaneously increase the complexity and weaken the versatility of hydrogel machines. Here, a light-encoding strategy based on the dynamic coordination between the ferric iron and carboxyl group (Fe 3+ ─COO − ) to integrate the frame and actuating units into a single hydrogel without assembly is proposed. The spatiotemporal control of light irradiation is expected to make the light-encoding process sequential and reprogrammable. Results demonstrate that the light-encoded patterns determine the morphing route and further activate shape-morphing owing to swelling mismatch. The actuating units can be successively created by localized irradiation or elaborately turned by re-coordinating and light-encoding. This endows the encoded hydrogel with sequential and multistage shape-morphing behavior, similar to the living creatures. This strategy allows the design of assembly-free soft machines with sequential and multistage shape-morphing performance, which will benefit the design of more types of hydrogel machines.
研究领域:
材料科学
·
生物工程
✓ 已验证
产品关联
DOI
高影响因子
危险品化学品经营许可证（带存储）