Glow-Worm-Inspired Fluorescent Self-Healing Actuators for Soft Robot and Reconfigurable Information Encryption

Fluorescent actuators with light-emitting and shape-deformation properties are promising in bionics and soft robotics. However, current fluorescent actuators barely balance actuation performances with fluorescence properties, as they exhibit insufficient brightness, poor color-purity, low-stability, and few functional-integrations, limiting their applications in complex scenarios. Herein, inspired by glow-worms, a multifunctional fluorescent actuator by combining ultra-stable perovskite quantum dots with polyurethane and graphene oxide composites is reported, which integrates large deformation, high brightness, high color-purity, color-changing function and full-device self-healing function together. The actuator shows a large bending curvature of 2.48 cm^-1. It exhibits excellent fluorescence performances, such as quantum yields as high as 58.88% and full-widths at half-maximum as narrow as 21 nm. The actuation and fluorescence properties show long-term stability during more than 1100 cycles of near-infrared irradiation and 12 h of ultraviolet exposure. Moreover, the actuator is integrated with color-changing and full-device self-healing functions, enabling a synergetic color/shape change and reconfigurable on-demand fluorescent patterns. Then, a smart gripper and a crawling robot with crawling/rollover motions are demonstrated. Finally, a non-contact dynamic display of reconfigurable encrypted information driven by light is fabricated to mimic light communications of glow-worms. This actuator demonstrates unprecedented multifunctionality, opening new avenues for fluorescent soft robotics.