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Updated: Nov 20, 2025

Fabricating Degradable Thermoresponsive Hydrogels on Multiple Length Scales via Reactive Extrusion, Microfluidics, Self-assembly, and Electrospinning

Fabricating Degradable Thermoresponsive Hydrogels on Multiple Length Scales via Reactive Extrusion, Microfluidics, Self-assembly, and Electrospinning

Published on: April 16, 2018

Heterogeneous Hydrogel Structures with Spatiotemporal Reconfigurability using Addressable and Tunable Voxels.

Roozbeh Khodambashi¹, Yousif Alsaid², Rossana Rico²

¹The Polytechnic School, Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Mesa, AZ, 85212, USA.

Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

|January 25, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed soft voxel actuators (SVAs) for stimuli-responsive hydrogels. These programmable building blocks enable complex, localized deformations for advanced hydrogel robots in dynamic environments.

Keywords:

heterogeneous hydrogel structures on-demand shape morphing reconfigurable hydrogel robots soft voxel actuators tunable hydrogel properties

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Last Updated: Nov 20, 2025

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Published on: September 29, 2016

Area of Science:

Materials Science
Robotics
Polymer Chemistry

Background:

Stimuli-responsive hydrogels offer integrated sensing and actuation, reducing device complexity.
Uniform volume changes in traditional hydrogels limit applications requiring localized, dynamic deformations.
Developing hydrogel systems for sophisticated robotic functions remains a significant challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

To introduce soft voxel actuators (SVAs) for creating heterogeneous hydrogel structures with programmable spatiotemporal deformations.
To demonstrate the fabrication of tunable SVAs using a one-step photopolymerization method.
To showcase the potential of SVAs in enabling advanced hydrogel robotic applications.

Main Methods:

SVAs fabricated via mixed-solvent photopolymerization utilizing poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) cononsolvency.
Tunable hydrogel properties (swelling ratio, rate, Young's modulus) achieved through material design and processing.
Spatiotemporal deformations programmed by SVA arrangement and activated Joule heating.

Main Results:

Heterogeneous hydrogel structures capable of programmable, localized, and time-varying deformations demonstrated.
SVAs exhibit tunable mechanical and swelling properties, suitable for mass production.
Functional robotic behaviors including object manipulation, obstacle avoidance, wave generation, and shape morphing achieved.

Conclusions:

SVAs provide a versatile platform for creating complex, adaptive hydrogel structures.
This innovation facilitates the development of tunable, untethered hydrogel robots with high degrees of freedom.
Programmable hydrogel robots can operate effectively in unstructured and dynamic environments.