4D Printed Actuators with Soft-Robotic Functions.
By María López-Valdeolivas, Danqing Liu, D. Broer, Carlos Sánchez‐Somolinos. Macromolecular rapid communications, 2018
302 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Soft matter elements undergoing programed, reversible shape change can contribute to fundamental advance in areas such as optics, medicine, microfluidics, and robotics. Crosslinked liquid crystalline polymers have demonstrated huge potential to implement soft responsive elements; however, the complexity and size of the actuators are limited by the current dominant thin-film geometry processing toolbox. Using 3D printing, stimuli-responsive liquid crystalline elastomeric structures are created here. The printing process prescribes a reversible shape-morphing behavior, offering a new paradigm for active polymer system preparation. The additive character of this technology also leads to unprecedented geometries, complex functions, and sizes beyond those of typical thin-films. The fundamental concepts and devices presented therefore overcome the current limitations of actuation energy available from thin-films, thereby narrowing the gap between materials and practical applications.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Mechanical Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0c206edc041c21f172c9b52083e9fa3152663ed1
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Citations in the corpus
- Developments in 4D-printing: a review on current smart materials, technologies, and applications (2019, background): “a potential application in adaptive optics, as seen in Figure 5(b) [95].”
- Shape memory behavior and recovery force of 4D printed textile functional composites (2018, background): “Owing to its distinct advantages, 4D printing has been adopted in various technological fields, such as biomimetic structures [7], robotics [8], electronic devices [9], medical devices [10,11] as well as tissue engineering [12,13].”