Soft actuators can respond to electricity, [1][2][3][4] light, [5][6][7][8] heat, [9,10] and humidity [11,12] and produce mechanical deformation output. Owing to a wide range of applications in soft robots, [13] intelligent biomimetic devices, [14,15] biomedical sensing and diagnosis, [16] and wearable devices, [17] they have received more and more research interests recently. According to the external stimuli and actuation mechanism, soft actuators can be divided into many types, such as electrical-induced actuator, [1][2][3][4] optical-induced actuator, [5][6][7][8] magnetic actuator, [18] and so on. Among them, actuators driven by electrical voltage or light have been widely studied due to their unique characteristics. For the electrical-induced actuator, electrical energy has the advantages of simple operation, easy storage and utilization, and good controllability, whereas the light-induced actuator has unique features, including wireless actuation, remote control, and no contact with the sample. [19][20][21] Therefore, by combing the advantages of the two types of actuators, the application range and utilization convenience can be largely improved. For example, in microrobot applications, the power system it carries may be restricted due to the limited size of the microrobot. When the electricity is exhausted, the light energy can be supplied to drive the microrobot to continuously work. In space, the sunlight can be used as the driving source of the actuator, and the electric energy is used as the driving source of the actuator once it is in the dark environment, ensuring the normal operation of the actuator and save energy. However, most of the actuators studied only respond to one singe stimulus. It is still of great importance to fabricate actuators with highperformance and multistimuli response.Developing new types of materials with multistimuli responsive property is the key to achieve multistimuli responsive actuators. As a new type of 2D nanomaterials, transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanosheets have attracted enormous attention due to their excellent properties, including tunable bandgap, [22] excellent optical properties, high strength, [23] and so on, which makes them great potential in sensors, [24] batteries, [25] supercapactitors, energy storage and conversion, [26] and actuators. As one of the typical TMDs, molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) has good photothermal conversion characteristics.
Soft ActuatorsAn intelligent soft gripper with self‐sensing function based on 1T MoS2 and carbon nanotubes composite actuator is fabricated by Ying Hu, Longfei Chang, Luhua Lu, and co‐workers in article number http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/aisy.202000240. This gripper can not only deform to grasp objects under light stimulation, but also realize the integrated sensing of its own light‐driven manipulation process.
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