A novel strategy to synthesize a glycerol-hydrogel with high stretchability, ultra-toughness, remarkable tolerance, and outstanding self-healing capability has been developed. A soft actuator has been fabricated based on the glycerol-hydrogel.
Biomimetic
human skinlike materials with preferably self-healing ability, high
sensitivity for external stimuli, and good adhesiveness against diverse
substrates under a wide range of temperatures are of great importance
in various applications such as wearable devices, human-motion devices,
and soft robotics. However, most of the reported biomimetic human
skinlike materials lack memory function, i.e., they cannot memorize
the external stimuli once the stimuli disappear. This drawback hinders
their applications in mimicking the human skin in real world. Here,
a polyacrylamide/Au@polydopamine glycerol–water (GW) hydrogel
has been designed to address this challenge. The as-prepared GW hydrogel
exhibits a fast self-healing efficiency and good adhesiveness against
diverse substrates under a wide range of temperatures (from −15
to 37 °C). Additionally, our GW hydrogel also possesses good
perceived ability for external stimuli and subtle/large human motions.
Most importantly, resistance memory function has been realized based
on our GW hydrogel. These outstanding properties make it potentially
significant in mimicking the human skin in real world.
Designing hydrogels with both excellent mechanical property and self-healing ability has attracted enormous attentions because applications of hydrogels are restricted in many fields due to their poor mechanical property and...
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