Aggregation‐Induced Emissive Carbon Dots Gels for Octopus‐Inspired Shape/Color Synergistically Adjustable Actuators

Abstract

Some living organisms such as the octopus have fantastic abilities to simultaneously swim away and alter body color/morphology for disguise and self‐protection, especially when there is a threat perception. However, it is still quite challenging to construct artificial soft actuators with octopus‐like synergistic shape/color change and directional locomotion behaviors, but such systems could enhance the functions of soft robotics dramatically. Herein, we proposed to utilize unique hydrophobic carbon dots (CDs) with rotatable surficial groups to construct the aggregation‐induced emission (AIE) active glycol CDs polymer gel, which could be further employed to be interfacially bonded to an elastomer to produce anisotropic bilayer soft actuator. When putting the actuator on a water surface, glycol spontaneously diffused out from the gel layer to allow water intake, resulting in a color change from a blue dispersion fluorescence to red AIE and a shape deformation, as well as a large surface tension gradient that can promote its autonomous locomotion. Based on these findings, artificial soft swimming robots with octopus‐like synergistic shape/color change and directional swimming motion were demonstrated. This study provides an elegant strategy to develop advanced multi‐functional bio‐inspired intelligent soft robotics.

A Data‐Driven Review of Soft Robotics

“…[ 499 ] Based on thermal expansion, CNT bilayer composites have enabled “flicking” locomotion. [ 500 ] These publications (and other recent works) [ 501–503 ] represent just a glimpse of the wide range of research harnessing the spectrum of properties and conformations that carbon enables.…”

“…[483,[572][573][574][575] This use case is the only deviation from electric sensors. Chromatically changing actuators, [503] microsphere expansion inducing volumetric changes, [576] and a self-oscillating locomotor are examples of the subjects of just a few of the recent publications that describe optically driven soft devices. [577] The last function medium regards chemical operation.…”

Highly Plasticized Lanthanide Luminescence for Information Storage and Encryption Applications

“…[ 33 , 34 ] Previous information storage systems prepared using functional materials are generally limited to simple patterns, making it hard to design information encryption and thus greatly limiting their widespread applications. [ 21 , 35 , 36 ] The advancements of image processing techniques will enable the design of complex patterns for information encoding and decoding, which could greatly broaden the designs of information storage styles. In addition, information encryption could be implemented in the luminescence of the complex patterns.…”

Quantum Dots-Loaded Self-Healing Gels for Versatile Fluorescent Assembly

“…In particular, CQDs have become one of the most popular fluorescent materials due to their stability, good water dispersibility, low cytotoxicity, better biocompatibility and accessible synthesis methods [ 3 , 4 ]. By virtue of these advantages, the integration of QDs with polymer gels has been widely explored [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Polymer gel provides an ideal matrix for hosting and immobilizing QDs, which have a unique porous structure.…”

“…It should be noted that the loading of QDs not only endows the composites with fluorescence, but also other enhanced and fascinating features, such as self-healing [ 13 ]. Up to now, QDs-loaded gels have found a wide range of applications in sensors [ 5 , 6 ], wound dressing [ 7 ], drug delivery [ 8 ], photothermal therapy [ 9 ], optoelectronic devices [ 10 ], DNA detection [ 12 ], etc. However, these QDs-loaded gels usually show a single fluorescence signal, which hampers the precision and extension of their practical application.…”