Bioinspired living structural color hydrogels

Abstract

Structural color materials from existing natural organisms have been widely studied to enable artificial manufacture. Variable iridescence has attracted particular interest because of the displays of various brilliant examples. Existing synthetic, variable, structural color materials require external stimuli to provide changing displays, despite autonomous regulation being widespread among natural organisms, and therefore suffer from inherent limitations. Inspired by the structural color regulation mechanism of chameleons, we present a conceptually different structural color material that has autonomic regulation capability by assembling engineered cardiomyocyte tissues on synthetic inverse opal hydrogel films. The cell elongation and contraction in the beating processes of the cardiomyocytes caused the inverse opal structure of the substrate film to follow the same cycle of volume or morphology changes. This was observed as the synchronous shifting of its photonic band gap and structural colors. Such biohybrid structural color hydrogels can be used to construct a variety of living materials, such as two-dimensional selfregulating structural color patterns and three-dimensional dynamic Morpho butterflies. These examples indicated that the stratagem could provide an intrinsic color-sensing feedback to modify the system behavior/action for future biohybrid robots. In addition, by integrating the biohybrid structural color hydrogels into microfluidics, we developed a "heart-on-a-chip" platform featuring microphysiological visuality for biological research and drug screening. This biohybrid, living, structural color hydrogel may be widely used in the design of a variety of intelligent actuators and soft robotic devices.

Bio‐inspired Design and Additive Manufacturing of Soft Materials, Machines, Robots, and Haptic Interfaces

“…[111] As these stimuli greatly overlap with the ones for actuating soft materials,one promising path in research is to combine the photonic materials with soft actuators for adaptive,d ynamic displays in future biohybrid robots (Figure 2c). [112] Directly embedding artificial "chromatophores" into the elastomeric substrates is more widely adopted in conventional soft robotic systems.T hese chromatophores are based upon materials and structures that are capable of emitting light. Examples include the patterning of microfluidic networks filled with pigmented or fluorescent liquids and overlaying highly stretchable electroluminescent polymer composites ( Figure 2d).…”

A Patterned Mechanochromic Photonic Polymer for Reversible Image Reveal

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6] For instance, cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, www.advmatinterfaces.de strain sensors, such as incapability of information delivery, [35] humidity dependence, [19,22,25] and lack of scalability [15,23] and has various potential applications including stress, strain and bending sensors, data encryption and security labels. [1][2][3][4][5][6] For instance, cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, www.advmatinterfaces.de strain sensors, such as incapability of information delivery, [35] humidity dependence, [19,22,25] and lack of scalability [15,23] and has various potential applications including stress, strain and bending sensors, data encryption and security labels.…”

Nano‐ and Microfabrication for Engineering Native‐Like Muscle Tissues

“…Along with the culture time, the aligned cells increased from 39 ± 5% after 8 h of seeding to 57 ± 3% after 72 h, and then decreased after 192 h as a result of the formation of confluence. In another study, Fu et al fabricated 20, 40, and 60 µm wide parallel grooves on gelMA hydrogel films by replicating the patterns on silicon wafers . It was found that 55% of CMs aligned within 30° from the direction of 60 µm grooves, while this proportion increased when the width decreased (80% for 20 µm).…”