(Invited) Bio-mimic Motion of Gel Material Dispersed with Magnetic Particles

Abstract

The authors proposed a fabricating process for soft actuators, named 4D printing system for magnetic gel materials. 4D printer is a recently developed process that can print out not only a 3-dimensional structure but also deformations in the printed structure at the same time. Our proposing process utilizes a gel material dispersed with magnetic particles as a starting material. We can design magnetic anisotropy in each portion of the printed object during additive manufacturing so that the printed structures could deform under an applied magnetic field. In this paper, we demonstrated 2 kinds of biomimetic examples by this printing system, a worm-type soft actuator and an array of artificial cilia. The first example could crawl in a narrow gap. The second one could reproduce a metachronal wave, which is a phase propagation wave found on natural small organisms. These demonstrations show that the proposed printing system could output variable bio-mimic soft actuators.

Direct Observation of Gastropod's Locomotion for Soft Robot Application

“…There is an idea to realize various motion in the soft robot. We are now developing 3D printing systems for the magnetic soft materials [22][23][24][25]. Of course, we can change oil to many kinds of viscous liquid to change the interfacial state.…”

Bio-mimic Motion of Elastic Material Dispersed with Hard-magnetic Particles

“…As we have already shown in previous researches, ciliary movement is asymmetric [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. The stroke pattern of a natural cilium consists of 2 different strokes; the effective stroke and the recovery stroke.…”

“…If we could apply biomimicry structures of these natural cilia, they would be useful engineering tools. We utilized magnetic elastomer [7][8][9] to mimic the motion of flexible structures in natural cilia [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Soft Actuator with DN-gel Dispersed with Magnetic Particles

“…On the other hand, in recent years, gel materials have been focused as flexible materials as well [15][16][17][18]. A gel material is a flexible material that contains a liquid such as water in its polymer network structure.…”

“…The agar plays an important role for this process, which will be also explained later. This method would be used for a new method for a 4D-printing system of magnetic materials [16][17][18]20].…”