Strategically designed, well-defined 3D architectures could offer great opportunities, that are unavailable in their 2D counterparts, for a broad spectrum of applications, such as microelectronics, bioelectronics, photonics and optoelectronics, micro-electromechanical systems, metamaterials, energy storage and harvesting, soft robotics, and many others. Existing manufacturing techniques of 3D structures mainly include 3D printing, templated growth, fluidic self-assembly, and mechanically guided 3D assembly. Among these methods, the mechanically guided 3D assembly has recently attracted broad attention in the scientific community. The process starts from the planar fabrication of patterned 2D precursor structures, followed by the 2D-to-3D shape transformation via controlled rolling, folding, curving, and/ or buckling. [4] This process is naturally compatible with existing advanced planar fabrication technologies (e.g., lithographic and laser-processing techniques). Consequently, micro/nanoscale structures, sensors and/or other functional components Mechanically guided, 3D assembly has attracted broad interests, owing to its compatibility with planar fabrication techniques and applicability to a diversity of geometries and length scales. Its further development requires the capability of on-demand reversible shape reconfigurations, desirable for many emerging applications (e.g., responsive metamaterials, soft robotics). Here, the design, fabrication, and modeling of soft electrothermal actuators based on laser-induced graphene (LIG) are reported and their applications in mechanically guided 3D assembly and human-soft actuators interaction are explored. Over 20 complex 3D architectures are fabricated, including reconfigurable structures that can reshape among three distinct geometries. Also, the structures capable of maintaining 3D shapes at room temperature without the need for any actuation are realized by fabricating LIG actuators at an elevated temperature. Finite element analysis can quantitatively capture key aspects that govern electrothermally controlled shape transformations, thereby providing a reliable tool for rapid design optimization. Furthermore, their applications are explored in human-soft actuators interaction, including elastic metamaterials with human gesture-controlled bandgap behaviors and soft robotic fingers which can measure electrocardiogram from humans in an on-demand fashion. Other demonstrations include artificial muscles, which can lift masses that are about 110 times of their weights and biomimetic frog tongues which can prey insects.

Complex 3D functional architectures are of widespread interest due to their potential applications in biomedical devices, [1][2][3][4][5] metamaterials, [6][7][8][9][10] energy storage and conversion platforms, [11][12][13][14][15][16] and electronics systems. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Although existing fabrication techniques such as 3D printing, [4,14,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] templated growth, [33][34][35][36] and controlled folding [2,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43] can serve as powerful routes to diverse classes of 3D structures that address requirements in a number of interesting technologies, each has some set of limitations in materials compatibility, accessible feature sizes, and compatibility with well-developed 2D processing techniques used in the semiconductor and photonics industries. [44][45][46] Despite significant efforts in research and development, there remains a need for methods that provide access to complex 3D mesostructures that incorporate high-performance materials.Capabilities for controlled formation of sophisticated 3D micro/nanostructures in advanced materials have foundational implications across a broad range of fields. Recently developed methods use stress release in prestrained elastomeric substrates as a driving force for assembling 3D structures and functional microdevices from 2D precursors. A limitation of this approach is that releasing these structures from their substrate returns them to their original 2D layouts due to the elastic recovery of the constituent materials. Here, a concept in which shape memory polymers serve as a means to achieve freestanding 3D architectures from the same basic approach is introduced, with demonstrated ability to realize lateral dimensions, characteristic feature sizes, and thicknesses as small as ≈500, 10, and 5 µm simultaneously, and the potential to scale to much larger or smaller dimensions. Wireless electronic devices illustrate the capacity to integrate other materials and functional components into these 3D frameworks. Quantitative mechanics modeling and experimental measurements illustrate not only shape fixation but also capabilities that allow for structure recovery and shape programmability, as a form of 4D structural control. These ideas provide opportunities in fields ranging from micro-electromechanical systems and microrobotics, to smart intravascular stents, tissue scaffolds, and many others. www.advmat.de www.advancedsciencenews.com A collection of recent publications reports schemes that exploit compressive buckling as a means for assembly of complex 3D functional devices in a diversity of configurations and with a broad range of material compositions, including critical dimensions that span nanometer to centimeter length scales. [47][48][49][50][51] Here, relaxation of a prestrained elastomer substrate, as an assembly platform, imposes stresses on a 2D precursor structure to transform its geometry into a desired 3D shape. With a few exceptions, [52,53] deformations of the micro/ nanomaterials in the precursor rema...

No abstract

Stimulus-responsive hydrogels, such as conductive hydrogels and thermoresponsive hydrogels, have been explored extensively and are considered promising candidates for smart materials such as wearable devices and artificial muscles. However, most of the existing studies on stimulus-responsive hydrogels have mainly focused on their single stimulus-responsive property and have not explored multistimulus-responsive or multifunction properties. Although some works involved multifunctionality, the prepared hydrogels were incompatible. In this work, a multistimulus-responsive and multifunctional hydrogel system (carboxymethyl cellulose/poly acrylic-acrylamide) with good elasticity, superior flexibility, and stable conductivity was prepared. The prepared hydrogel not only showed excellent human motion detection and physiological signal response but also possessed the ability to respond to environmental temperature changes. By integrating a conductive hydrogel with a thermoresponsive poly­(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) hydrogel to form a bilayer hydrogel, the prepared bilayer also functioned as two kinds of actuators owing to the different degrees of swelling and shrinking under different thermal stimuli. Furthermore, the different thermochromic properties of each layer in the bilayer hydrogel endowed the hydrogel with a thermoresponsive “smart” feature, the ability to display and conceal information. Therefore, the prepared hydrogel system has excellent prospects as a smart material in different applications, such as ionic skin, smart info-window, and soft robotics.

No abstract

No abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) cellular graphene structures have wide applications in energy storage, catalysis, polymer composites, electromagnetic shielding, and many others. However, the current strategies to form cellular graphene are only able to realize limited structure control and are hard to achieve the construction of 3D hierarchical architectures with complex, programmed configurations, limiting the design capabilities to satisfy various next-generation device applications. In addition, cellular graphene usually exhibits limited electromechanical properties, and its electrical and electrochemical performances are dramatically affected by mechanical deformations, constraining its applications in emerging wearable electronics and energy devices. Herein, we report a simple, general, and effective route to 3D hierarchical architectures of cellular graphene with desired geometries through the use of a mechanically guided, 3D assembly approach to overcome the aforementioned two challenges. Demonstrations include more than 10 3D hierarchical architectures with diverse configurations, ranging from mixed tables and tents, to double-floor helices, to kirigami/origami-inspired structures, and to fully separated multilayer architectures. The LED arrays interconnected with 3D helical coils and 3D interdigital supercapacitors fabricated with solid-state electrolytes provide prototypic examples of wearable devices that exhibit outstanding electromechanical properties and can maintain stable performances with little change in the electrical and electrochemical responses under extreme deformations, in both the static and cyclic loading conditions.

In the field of bionic soft robots and microrobots, artificial muscle materials have exhibited unique potential for cutting-edge applications. However, current mainstream thermal-responsive artificial muscles based on semicrystalline polymers (SCPs), despite their excellent physical properties, suffer from the limitation of environmental stimuli in practice, while their photodriven counterparts adopting liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) lack ductility. Herein, a novel multifunctional programmable artificial muscle with a unique patch-sewing structure formed by π−π stacking between azobenzene groups was designed, which combined the advantages of SCPs and LCEs. The nanocomposite demonstrated a unique combination between artificial muscle performance (46.5 times the energy density and 26.6 times the power density of human skeletal muscles) and programmability (274.84% strain and 100% shape-memory recovery rate within 1 s). Meanwhile, coupling the photoisomerization of azobenzene and the photothermal conversion of gold nanorods, the cycle of deformation triggered by ultraviolet light and restoring by infrared light could be accomplished rapidly within 30 s. A COMSOL Multiphysics model was established and the corresponding finite element analysis verified the photoactuation and captured the general principle of light initiation in elastomers. These demonstrate that the multifunctional programmable elastomer is promising for artificial muscle applications, especially for photoinduced actuation.