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Updated: Jun 20, 2026
11:22
Cardiac Muscle-cell Based Actuator and Self-stabilizing Biorobot - PART 1
Published on: July 11, 2017
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Hydrogel muscles powering reconfigurable micro-metastructures with wide-spectrum programmability.
Mingchao Zhang1, Aniket Pal1, Zhiqiang Zheng1
1Physical Intelligence Department, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, Germany.
Nature Materials
|August 21, 2023
Summary
Researchers developed a programmable strategy for reconfigurable micro-metastructures using hydrogels as artificial muscles. This breakthrough allows diverse geometric transformations for advanced applications in encryption and robotics.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Mechanical Engineering
- Nanotechnology
Background:
- Stimuli-responsive geometric transformations are key for dynamic metamaterial properties.
- Current methods face challenges in programming diverse configurations from a single geometry, limiting versatile functionalities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present a programmable strategy for wide-spectrum reconfigurable micro-metastructures.
- To overcome design restrictions in achieving versatile functionalities in metamaterials.
Main Methods:
- Utilizing linearly responsive transparent hydrogels as artificial muscles to actuate micro-metastructures.
- Employing collaborative buckling of building blocks for micro-metastructure transformation.
- Rationally designing 3D printing parameters and geometry features for controlled deformation.
Main Results:
- Achieved controllable wide-spectrum pattern transformation with programmable chirality and optical anisotropy.
- Demonstrated locally isotropic or anisotropic deformation based on design parameters.
- Enabled thermally reconfigurable printed metalattices with pixel-by-pixel mapping for information display/hiding.
Conclusions:
- The presented strategy enables versatile reconfigurable micro-metastructures using hydrogel actuation.
- The mechanism is applicable to various materials and offers opportunities in encryption, robotics, photonics, and phononics.
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