ABSTRACTTough and responsive hydrogels have recently attracted great research interests
for potential applications in artifical muscles, soft robotics, and actuators,
etc. This paper overviews our recent progresses in the design and synthesis of
hydrogels with very high strength and toughness, and actuators based on these
hydrogels. Inorganic nanospheres, nanorods, and nanosheets are exploited as
multi-functional crosslinkers to adsorb or bond with hydrophilic chains, leading
to hydrogels with very high strength, toughness, fatigue resistance, and/or
self-healing. Introduction of functional groups including ionic monomers and
amino groups results in hydrogels reponsive to pH, ionic strength and electric
field. Besides, ionoprinting has been used to change local crosslink density
based on reversible chelating/decomposition of metal ions with functional
groups. This process is rapid and thus enables reversible and rapid actuation of
hydrogel devices. Our studies will further aim to develop sophiscated devices by
assembling hydrogel actuators.
Achromatic terahertz Airy beam generation with dielectric metasurfaces
