Recent Progress of Fuel‐Driven Temporary Materials

Abstract

Comprehensive SummaryFuel‐driven dissipative self‐assembly, which is a well‐established concept in recent years, refers to out‐of‐equilibrium molecular self‐assembly initiated and supported by the addition of active molecules (chemical fuel). It widely exists in nature since many temporary, active micro‐ or nanostructures in living bodies are generated by the dissipative self‐assembly of biomolecules. Therefore, the study on dissipative self‐assembly provides a good opportunity to have an insight into the microscopic mechanism of living organisms. In the meantime, dissipative assembly is thought to be a potential pathway to achieve dynamic, temporary supramolecular materials. Recently, a number of temporary materials have been developed with the aid of strategies for realizing dissipative self‐assembly. Some of their properties, including solubility, stiffness, turbidity, color, or self‐healing ability, change upon the addition of chemical fuel but spontaneously restore with chemical fuel consumption. The dynamic of these materials brings them various unprecedented functions. In this review, the principles of fabricating a fuel‐driven temporary material are first reviewed. Subsequently, recent examples of fuel‐driven temporary materials are emphatically summarized, including gels, self‐erased inks, nanoreactors, self‐healing materials, nanochannels, and droplets. Finally, the challenges of developing fuel‐driven temporary materials and some perspectives on the function and application of such kind of materials are discussed.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Novel Acid-Driven Bioinspired Self-Resettable Bilayer Hydrogel Actuator Mimicking Natural Muscles

“…In recent years, inspired by the newly established concept of dissipative self-assembly, − many non-equilibrium, self-resettable temporary materials, such as transient gels, self-erased inks, temporary nanoreactors, transiently self-healable materials, etc., have been reported . Early in 2010, van Esch and co-workers applied a carboxyl-containing well-soluble molecule to fabricate a non-equilibrium transient hydrogel successfully .…”

“…It can be found that the deswelling− swelling cycle of this hydrogel was simply initiated by only one simple trigger, greatly enhancing the automaticity of the bilayer hydrogel actuators containing this hydrogel as a movable layer. Thus far, successful examples of chemical fuel-driven selfresettable hydrogel actuators are still limited, because the key to realizing such kinds of actuators is to find a special negative feedback chemical reaction network (NFCRN), 33 in which the chemical fuel can quickly react or interact with the stimuliresponsive groups on the cross-linked polymer network of the hydrogel, resulting in its swelling or deswelling, and then the product or complex formed by the stimuli-responsive group and chemical fuel can spontaneously decompose, leading to the shape and size restoration of the hydrogel. Although several NFCRNs have been employed for realizing chemical fuel-driven self-resettable hydrogel actuators, it is still worth exploring more NFCRNs to bring more probability to such types of hydrogel , which consumed H + .…”