Although stimulus-responsive hydrogels have great deformability, when used as actuators, smart switches, and artificial muscles, their power density is lower due to the lower transmission force (~2 kPa) and speed driven by osmotic pressure. low.

Recently, inspired by the energy conversion mechanism of many organisms in the process of jumping, Zhou Feng, a researcher at the Lanzhou Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ximin He at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported that an elastic drive was designed by storing and releasing elastic potential energy in a polymer network. The strong shrinkage hydrogel.

Article points

1) Compared with commonly studied osmotic pressure-driven smart hydrogels, elastic-driven smart hydrogels based on elastic energy storage and release methods have stronger and faster shrinkage (40kPa, 25%/min) and better Mechanical properties (high elastic modulus 0.7 MPa, toughness 12.7 MJ/m3). The three characteristics of force, speed and elastic modulus are improved at the same time, which fundamentally breaks the contradiction between the three, and makes its output energy density as high as 15.3 kJ/m3, which exceeds all the most advanced hydrogels and even exceeds Biological muscles.

2) The study found that this elastic energy storage and release method enables the hydrogel material to have unique elastic-plastic switchability and complex deformation programmability, resulting in anisotropic or isotropic shrinkage and unprecedented multi-level deformation capabilities become possible. This modular material design composed of elastic elements and smart elements is versatile and can be widely used in various elastic polymers and chemical reactions.

In general, the energy storage-release strategy solves the long-standing weak or slow shrinkage problems of permeable hydrogels, and opens a way for the rational design of powerful smart hydrogels with multiple restructuring behaviors . In addition, water-containing, soft, programmable and powerful hydrogel materials will improve the performance of applications such as artificial muscles, soft robots, flexible devices and biomedical materials without reducing the contraction speed.

references:

Yanfei Ma, et al, Bioinspired high-power-density strong contractile hydrogel by programmable elastic recoil, Sci. Adv. 2020

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd2520

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/47/eabd2520

Source of information: Fantastic Object Theory

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