Leveraging liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) to realize scalable fabrication of high‐performing fibrous artificial muscles is of particular interest because these active soft materials can provide large, reversible, programmable deformations upon environmental stimuli. High‐performing fibrous LCEs require the used processing technology to enable shaping LCEs into micro‐scale fine fibers as thin as possible while achieving macroscopic LC orientation, which however remains a daunting challenge. Here, a bioinspired spinning technology is reported that allows for continuous, high‐speed production (fabrication speed up to 8400 m h−1) of thin and aligned LCE microfibers combined with rapid deformation (actuation strain rate up to 810% s−1), powerful actuation (actuation stress up to 5.3 MPa), high response frequency (50 Hz), and long cycle life (250 000 cycles without obvious fatigue). Inspired by liquid crystalline spinning of spiders that takes advantage of multiple drawdowns to thin and align their dragline silks, internal drawdown via tapered‐wall‐induced‐shearing and external drawdown via mechanical stretching are employed to shape LCEs into long, thin, aligned microfibers with the desirable actuation performances, which few processing technologies can achieve. This bioinspired processing technology capable of scalable production of high‐performing fibrous LCEs would benefit the development of smart fabrics, intelligent wearable devices, humanoid robotics, and other areas.
Multiple‐stimuli responsive soft actuators with tunable initial shapes would have substantial potential in broad technological applications, ranging from advanced sensors, smart robots to biomedical devices. However, existing soft actuators are often limited to single initial shape and are unable to reversibly reconfigure into desirable shapes, which severely restricts the multifunctions that can be integrated into one actuator. Here, a novel reconfigurable supramolecular polymer/polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bilayer actuator exhibiting multiple‐stimuli responses is presented. In this bilayer actuator, the supramolecular polymer layer constructed of poly(5‐Norbornene‐2‐carboxylic acid‐1,3‐cyclooctadiene) (PNCCO) and azopyridine derivative (PyAzoPy) via H‐bonds provides multiple‐stimuli responses: PyAzoPy offers light response and carboxylic groups in PNCCO endow the actuator with humidity response. Meanwhile thermoplastic PET layer enables the bilayer actuators to be reconfigured into various shapes by thermal stimuli. The rationally designed actuators exhibit versatile capabilities to reversibly reconfigure into a set of initial shapes and carry out multiple functions, such as photo‐driven “foldback‐clip” and Ω‐shaped crawling robots. In addition, bio‐inspired plants constructed by reconfiguration of such actuators demonstrate reversible multiple‐stimuli responses. It is anticipated that these novel actuators with highly tunable geometries and actuation modes would be useful to develop multifunctional devices capable of performing diverse tasks.
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