Infrared (IR) adaptation phenomena are ubiquitous in nature and biological systems. Taking inspiration from natural creatures, researchers have devoted extensive efforts for developing advanced IR adaptive materials and exploring their applications in areas of smart camouflage, thermal energy management, biomedical science, and many other IR‐related technological fields. Herein, an up‐to‐date review is provided on the recent advancements of bioinspired IR adaptive materials and their promising applications. First an overview of IR adaptation in nature and advanced artificial IR technologies is presented. Recent endeavors are then introduced toward developing bioinspired adaptive materials for IR camouflage and IR radiative cooling. According to the Stefan‐Boltzmann law, IR camouflage can be realized by either emissivity engineering or thermal cloaks. IR radiative cooling can maximize the thermal radiation of an object through an IR atmospheric transparency window, and thus holds great potential for use in energy‐efficient green buildings and smart personal thermal management systems. Recent advances in bioinspired adaptive materials for emerging near‐IR (NIR) applications are also discussed, including NIR‐triggered biological technologies, NIR light‐fueled soft robotics, and NIR light‐driven supramolecular nanosystems. This review concludes with a perspective on the challenges and opportunities for the future development of bioinspired IR adaptive materials.

Herein, we report near‐infrared (NIR) light‐driven shape‐morphing of programmable MXene‐containing anisotropic hydrogel actuators that are fabricated through in situ free‐radical copolymerization of a judiciously designed MXene nanomonomer with thermosensitive hydrogel network. A low electric field (few V mm−1) was found to enable a spatial distribution of MXene nanosheets and hence introduce anisotropy into the hydrogel network. Programmable anisotropic hydrogel actuators were developed by controlling ITO electrode pattern, direct‐current (DC) electric field direction and mask‐assisted photopolymerization. As a proof‐of‐concept, we demonstrate NIR light‐driven shape morphing of the MXene‐containing anisotropic hydrogel into various shapes and devise a four‐arm soft gripper that can perform distinct photomechanical functions such as grasping, lifting/lowering down and releasing an object upon sequential NIR light exposure.

Soft robots that can move like living organisms and adapt to their surroundings are currently in the limelight from fundamental researches to technological applications, due to their advances in material...

Sulfur-doped graphene (S-G) is superior for electrocatalytic ambient N2-to-NH3 fixation, offering a remarkably large NH3 yield of 27.3 μg h−1 mgcat.−1 and a high Faradaic efficiency of 11.5% at −0.6 and −0.5 V vs. a reversible hydrogen electrode, respectively, in 0.1 M HCl.

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