Chen Fei Dai, Qing Li Zhu, Olena Khoruzhenko, Michael Thelen, Huiying Bai, Josef Breu, Miao Du, Qiang Zheng, Zi Liang Wu
Creatures, such as Venus flytrap and hummingbirds, capable of rapid predation through snap-through transition, provide paradigms for the design of soft actuators and robots with fast actions. However, these artificial "snappers" usually need contact stimulations to trigger the flipping. Reported here is a constrained anisotropic poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) hydrogel showing fast snapping upon light stimulation. This hydrogel is prepared by flow-induced orientation of nanosheets (NSs) within a rectangular tube...
May 5, 2024: Advanced Science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany)