Soft Actuators Made of Discrete Grains
Soft Actuators Made of Discrete Grains
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DOI：
10.1002/adma.202109617
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发表时间：
2022-03-10
影响因子：
29.4
通讯作者：
Kramer-Bottiglio, Rebecca
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Eristoff, Sophia;Kim, Sang Yup;Kramer-Bottiglio, Rebecca
最近的工作已经证明了由具有相变夹杂物的大块弹性体组成的致动器的潜力，用于产生高的力和大的体积膨胀。同时，颗粒组件已被证明能够通过不同的填料实现可调性能，通过堵塞实现动态模量，以及通过悬浮在载体流体中实现与各种打印方法的兼容性。本文介绍了一种由离散颗粒构成的新型软致动器--颗粒致动器。软颗粒由超弹性壳和多个溶剂核组成。在加热时，包封的溶剂核经历液体到气体的相变，引起超弹性壳的快速和强烈的体积膨胀高达700%。颗粒可以独立地用于微致动，或在颗粒团聚体中用于介观和宏观致动，证明了颗粒致动器的可扩展性。此外，活性颗粒可以悬浮在载体树脂或溶剂中，以通过已建立的颗粒材料加工技术实现可印刷的软致动器。通过结合相变软致动和粒度的优点，这项工作提出了实现软致动器的机会，可调的散装性能，自组装技术的兼容性，和按需可重构性。
Recent work has demonstrated the potential of actuators consisting of bulk elastomers with phase-changing inclusions for generating high forces and large volumetric expansions. Simultaneously, granular assemblies have been shown to enable tunable properties via different packings, dynamic moduli via jamming, and compatibility with various printing methods via suspension in carrier fluids. Herein, granular actuators are introduced, which represent a new class of soft actuators made of discrete grains. The soft grains consist of a hyperelastic shell and multiple solvent cores. Upon heating, the encapsulated solvent cores undergo liquid-to-gas phase change, inducing rapid and strong volumetric expansion of the hyperelastic shell up to 700%. The grains can be used independently for micro-actuation, or in granular agglomerates for meso- and macroscale actuation, demonstrating the scalability of the granular actuators. Furthermore, the active grains can be suspended in a carrier resin or solvent to enable printable soft actuators via established granular material processing techniques. By combining the advantages of phase-change soft actuation and granularity, this work presents the opportunity to realize soft actuators with tunable bulk properties, compatibility with self-assembly techniques, and on-demand reconfigurability.