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Free-form Light Actuators — Fabrication and Control of Actuation in Microscopic Scale

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Thermally responsive spatially programmable soft actuators with multiple response states enabled by Grayscale UV

Yizong Li¹, Sooyeon Noh Coodley¹, Si Chen¹

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA. Shanshan.yao@stonybrook.edu.

Materials Horizons

|December 9, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed a new UV light method to create soft actuators with tunable stiffness. This allows for multiple programmable shapes and movements in response to heat, advancing soft robotics.

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Area of Science:

Materials Science
Robotics
Polymer Science

Background:

Soft actuators are crucial for biomimetic robots and artificial muscles.
Achieving spatially programmable actuation in soft actuators under global thermal stimulus is challenging.
Current methods often limit programmability to binary states.

Purpose of the Study:

To introduce a novel grayscale UV light processing method for fabricating soft actuators.
To enable multiple programmable states in a single soft actuator.
To demonstrate complex shape morphing and robotic functionalities.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of soft actuators using a grayscale UV light processing technique.
Spatially tuning the Young's modulus of liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) programming layers.
Integration of LCE layers with photothermal heating layers for thermal response.
Encoding shape morphing patterns using UV photomasks with controlled grayscales.

Main Results:

Successfully fabricated soft actuators with spatially tunable Young's modulus.
Demonstrated multiple programmable states and complex shape morphing under global thermal stimulus.
Showcased functional prototypes, including caterpillar-inspired robots and octopus-arm structures.

Conclusions:

The grayscale UV method significantly advances the programmability of thermally responsive soft actuators.
This technique enables sophisticated control over actuator behavior for diverse applications.
Lays the foundation for next-generation soft robotic systems with enhanced capabilities.