Recent advances in colour-tunable soft actuators

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Abstract

This review summarizes the recent advances of colour-tunable soft actuators, with emphasis on their colour-change mechanisms and highlighting their applications.

Abstract

In nature, some creatures have the capability to change shapes to adapt to ever-changing environments, which greatly inspire researchers to develop soft actuators. To endow soft actuators with capabilities to interact with environment and integrate more feedbacks is of great significance. Colour-tunable soft actuators that provide colour change feedbacks have therefore attracted extensive attention. Based on either chemical-colour or structural-colour based materials, a variety of colour-tunable soft actuators enabling shape deformations (or locomotion) and colour changes have been prepared and hold promise for applications in soft robotics and biomedical devices. This review summarizes the recent advances of colour-tunable soft actuators, with emphasis on their colour-change mechanisms and highlighting their applications. Existing challenges and future perspectives on colour-tunable soft actuators are presented.

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Most cited references 95

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Author and article information

Contributors

Xuemin Du: (View ORCID Profile)

Journal

Journal ID (publisher-id): NANOHL

Title: Nanoscale

Abbreviated Title: Nanoscale

Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)

ISSN (Print): 2040-3364

ISSN (Electronic): 2040-3372

Publication date Created: February 11 2021

Publication date (Electronic): 2021

Volume: 13

Issue: 5

Pages: 2780-2791

Affiliations

[1 ]Institute of Biomedical & Health Engineering

[2 ]Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT)

[3 ]Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

[4 ]Shenzhen

[5 ]China

Article

DOI: 10.1039/D0NR07907C

PubMed ID: 33514972

SO-VID: 4c3be412-2094-44f4-8fd5-a12b69c8438b

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http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use

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