No abstract

Photoactuators have attracted significant interest for soft robot and gripper applications, yet most of them rely on free-space illumination, which requires a line-of-site low-loss optical path. While waveguide photoactuators can overcome this limitation, their actuating performances are fundamentally restricted by the nature of standard optical fibres. Herein, we demonstrated miniature photoactuators by embedding optical fibre taper in a polydimethylsiloxane/Au nanorod-graphene oxide photothermal film. The special geometric features of the taper endow the designed photoactuator with microscale active layer thickness, high energy density and optical coupling efficiency. Hence, our photoactuator show large bending angles (>270°), fast response (1.8 s for 180° bending), and low energy consumption (<0.55 mW/°), significantly exceeding the performance of state-of-the-art waveguide photoactuators. As a proof-of-concept study, one-arm and two-arm photoactuator-based soft grippers are demonstrated for capturing/moving small objects, which is challenging for free-space light-driven photoactuators.

The ability to sense heat and touch is essential for healthcare, robotics, and human–machine interfaces. By taking advantage of the engineerable waveguiding properties, we design and fabricate a flexible optical microfiber sensor for simultaneous temperature and pressure measurement based on theoretical calculation. The sensor exhibits a high temperature sensitivity of 1.2 nm/°C by measuring the shift of a high-order mode cutoff wavelength in the short-wavelength range. In the case of pressure sensing, the sensor shows a sensitivity of 4.5% per kilopascal with a fast temporal frequency response of 1000 Hz owing to the strong evanescent wave guided outside the microfiber. The cross talk is negligible because the temperature and pressure signals are measured at different wavelengths based on different mechanisms. The properties of fast temporal response, high temperature, and pressure sensitivity enable the sensor for real-time skin temperature and wrist pulse measurements, which is critical to the accurate analysis of pulse waveforms. We believe the sensor will have great potential in wearable optical devices ranging from healthcare to humanoid robots.

Plastic-based electronics fill the gaps in conventional rigid silicon-based devices toward the applications in soft interfaces. However, people in the future should also consider their potential environmental impact if tons of non-degradable plastics are applied. Silk fibroin is a superior substrate alternative for the development of "green" electronics; whereas, the brittleness of silk films is still a major limitation impeding their practical use. Different from the widely reported polyphasic composite approaches, here a trace-ion-assisted plasticization strategy is developed, and shape-engineerable pure silk fibroin paper (PSFP) is prepared for the first time, which can be engraved and crumpled like a sheet of paper in the dry state. The PSFPs exhibit higher tensile fracture energy (14.4 ± 4 kJ m −2 ) than any typical plastic-electronic-substrates as far as it is known. The intrinsic brittleness of pure silk films is overcome, and the PSFP can be easily engineered to form periodic meshes, electronic prototypes, and kirigami-based devices, which are beyond the reported regenerated silk films or silk composite films. Moreover, the scrape coating method employed here is simple, highly repeatable, and suitable for scaled production of low-cost PSFP continuously. Collectively, the PSFP is generalizable to various shapes and devices, represents an ideal substrate alternative to plastic electronics.

In-fiber structured particles and filament array have been recently emerging, providing unique advantages of feasible fabrication, diverse structures and sophisticated functionalities. This review will focus on the progress of this topic mainly from the perspective of fluid instabilities. By suppressing the capillary instability, the uniform layered structures down to nanometers are attained with the suitable materials selection. On the other hand, by utilizing capillary instability via post-drawing thermal treatment, the unprecedent structured particles can be designed with multimaterials for multifunctional fiber devices. Moreover, an interesting filamentation instability of a stretching viscous sheet has been identified during thermal drawing, resulting in an array of filaments. This review may inspire more future work to produce versatile devices for fiber electronics, either at a single fiber level or in large-scale fabrics and textiles, simply by manipulating and controlling fluid instabilities.