Light responsive plasmonic silicone elastomer/hydrogel soft actuator

Soft robots offer unique advantages in their ability to interact with fragile organisms. Light responsive soft actuators are promising for the development of the untethered soft robots. However, this requires a mechanism for converting the externally applied light into mechanical actuation. We designed, fabricated, and tested a light responsive soft actuator consist of silicone elastomer with plasmonic metal nanoparticle embedment and temperature sensitive hydrogel. We found that the selection of the carrier solvent for the metal nanoparticle embedment in silicone elastomer to be crucial. The fabricated soft actuator showed a relatively fast response time (< 5 min) under light illumination.