Untethered soft robotics

Rich, Steven; Wood, Robert J.; Majidi, Carmel

doi:10.1038/s41928-018-0024-1

Cited by 744 publications

(532 citation statements)

References 139 publications

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“…Recently, diverse small soft robotics have been developed by mimicking living species,1,2 wherein soft actuator is the key component to realize all kinds of motions. Up to now, several materials have demonstrated the ability of soft actuators based on different driving mechanisms, including but not limited to electric, magnetic, thermal, chemical, and optical fields 3–10.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plasmonic‐Assisted Graphene Oxide Films with Enhanced Photothermal Actuation for Soft Robots

Yang

Liu

Shen

2020

Adv Funct Materials

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Carbon‐based materials are widely used as light‐driven soft actuators relying on their thermal desorption or expansion. However, applying a passive layer in such film construction greatly limits the actuating efficiency, e.g., bending amplitude and speed. In this work, a dual active layer strengthened bilayer composite film made of graphene oxide (GO)–polydopamine (PDA)–gold nanoparticles (Au NPs)/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is developed. In this film, the conventional passive layer is replaced by another AuNPs‐enhanced thermal responsive layer. When applying NIR light exposure, the whole film deforms controllably resulting from the water loss in the GO–PDA–Au NPs layer and thermal expansion in the PDMS layer. Benefiting from the dual active bilayer mechanism, the thin film's actuating efficiency is dramatically improved compared with that of conventional methods. Specifically, the bending amplitude is enhanced up to 173%, and the actuating speed is improved to 3.5‐fold. The soft actuator can act as an artificial arm with high actuating strength and can be used as a wireless gripper. Moreover, the film can be designed as soft robots with various locomotion modes including linear, rolling, and steering motions. The developed composite film offers new opportunities for biomimetic soft robotics as well as future applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plasmonic‐Assisted Graphene Oxide Films with Enhanced Photothermal Actuation for Soft Robots

Yang

Liu

Shen

2020

Adv Funct Materials

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“…demands for soft and human-friendly electronic devices, such as soft robotics, wearable electronics, flexible displays, and stretchable sensors. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] Here, we report that the EMI SE of the three-dimensional (3D) LM-skeleton-based polymer composite increases to more than double at 400% strain, which reaches the shielding levels of metallic plates measured under the same conditions. The increase of EMI SE originates from the greatly improved reflectivity and absorption of EM waves as a result of the stretch-induced enhancement of electrical conductivity and the increased surface-to-volume ratio, respectively, enabled by the 3D LM architecture.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly Stretchable Polymer Composite with Strain‐Enhanced Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Effectiveness

et al. 2020

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Polymer composites with electrically conductive fillers have been developed as mechanically flexible, easily processable electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials. Although there are a few elastomeric composites with nanostructured silvers and carbon nanotubes showing moderate stretchability, their EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) deteriorates consistently with stretching. Here, a highly stretchable polymer composite embedded with a three‐dimensional (3D) liquid‐metal (LM) network exhibiting substantial increases of EMI SE when stretched is reported, which matches the EMI SE of metallic plates over an exceptionally broad frequency range of 2.65–40 GHz. The electrical conductivities achieved in the 3D LM composite are among the state‐of‐the‐art in stretchable conductors under large mechanical deformations. With skin‐like elastic compliance and toughness, the material provides a route to meet the demands for emerging soft and human‐friendly electronics.

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“…[18,23,[38][39][40] For pure sulfur polymer, external thermal annealing at 100 °C was necessary for complete healing of the pure sulfur copolymer materials as reported in previous work. In previous reports, self-healing of liquid metals based materials required delicate structural design such as microcapsuling or microfluidic tools to achieve the self-healing feature in bulk LM-based composites.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultrauniform Embedded Liquid Metal in Sulfur Polymers for Recyclable, Conductive, and Self‐Healable Materials

Xin

Peng

et al. 2019

Adv Funct Materials

181

144

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Liquid metals (LMs) are receiving growing interest in modern technologies for their various advantages. This work reports using elemental sulfur to achieve nanodispersed liquid metals in bulk polymers for multifunctional LM-based materials. Ring-opening polymerization and inverse vulcanization of elemental sulfur provide many polysulfide loops and thiol groups as effective binding ligands that enable extraordinarily uniform dispersion of liquid metals (≈1 µm) in bulk matrix and improve the mechanical performance of the materials. Interestingly, the liquid-metal-embedded sulfur polymer (LMESP) materials exhibit excellent thermal-/solventprocessability and recyclability. The uniform dispersion leads to phenomenal electrical conductivity of the LMESP at a low volume percentage of LM (30 vol%), overcoming the issue of nonconductivity typically seen in insulated LM-polymer blends. Additionally, the LMESP shows resistive sensitivity toward external pressure. Furthermore, the LMESP materials exhibit an excellent self-healing ability under mild conditions via the dynamic bonds between polysulfide loops/thiol groups and liquid metals. This work clearly offers a new platform to design liquid metals and can push them for broad applications.

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Untethered soft robotics

Cited by 744 publications

References 139 publications

Plasmonic‐Assisted Graphene Oxide Films with Enhanced Photothermal Actuation for Soft Robots

Plasmonic‐Assisted Graphene Oxide Films with Enhanced Photothermal Actuation for Soft Robots

Highly Stretchable Polymer Composite with Strain‐Enhanced Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Effectiveness

Ultrauniform Embedded Liquid Metal in Sulfur Polymers for Recyclable, Conductive, and Self‐Healable Materials

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