Actuators articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Integrating electrochemically actuated soft robotics with ultra-flexible microelectrodes enables reversible and gentle wrapping around nerves for high-quality recordings.

    • Klas Tybrandt

  • News & Views |

    By forming a heterostructure interface, and by judicious choice of crystallographic orientation, piezoelectrics are developed that show expansion or contraction along all axes on application of an electric field.

    • Eugene A. Eliseev
    •  & Anna N. Morozovska

  • News & Views |

    Photochromic molecular crystal arrays aligned in the micropores of a polymer membrane show high-performance actuation when stimulated by light. These soft composites might find applications in soft robotic devices.

    • Albert P. H. J. Schenning

  • Article |

    Photomechanical crystals are promising materials for converting photon energy into macroscopic work via reversible structural changes when exposed to light. Here the authors demonstrate highly ordered and compliant microcrystalline composites with a photomechanical performance exceeding that of single crystals.

    • Wenwen Xu
    • , David M. Sanchez
    •  & Ryan C. Hayward

  • Research Briefing |

    The output mechanical energy densities of ferroelectric polymers remain orders of magnitude smaller than those of piezoelectric ceramics and crystals, limiting their applications in soft actuators. But polymer composites subject to an electro-thermally driven ferroelectric phase transition under low electric fields are now shown to have giant actuation strains and large energy densities.

  • News & Views |

    An interplay between deswelling and buckling in a polymer gel is harnessed to achieve sequential snap events for repeatable jumping motion, opening the door to autonomously moving soft robots.

    • Johannes T. B. Overvelde

  • Article |

    Upon light stimulation, two jointed liquid crystalline network oscillators affect the movement of each other, achieving synchronized in-phase and anti-phase oscillations that can be explored to generate soft actuators with collective responses.

    • Ghislaine Vantomme
    • , Lars C. M. Elands
    •  & Dirk J. Broer

  • News & Views |

    Large reversible shear strain has been achieved by electric-field-driven bipolar switching in a hybrid ferroelectric, facilitating development of shape-memory-type actuators with outstanding figures of merit.

    • Sarah Guerin
    •  & Damien Thompson

  • Article |

    Protein-based materials for soft robotics that self-heal within a second while maintaining the high strength of the damaged area are reported.

    • Abdon Pena-Francesch
    • , Huihun Jung
    •  & Metin Sitti

  • News & Views |

    An elastomer sheet with programmed inner channel architecture swiftly shapes into a desired three-dimensional geometry upon the application of pressure.

    • Efi Efrati

  • Letter |

    Elastomer sheets with programmable air channel organization swiftly shape into complex three-dimensional structures upon the application of pressure.

    • Emmanuel Siéfert
    • , Etienne Reyssat
    •  & Benoît Roman

  • Article |

    Ferroelectricity can be modified by domain wall strain fields that extend over nanometres. Here, with X-ray microscopy, strain fields over several micrometres are observed in BaTiO3, suggesting ferroelectricity is globally altered throughout the material.

    • Hugh Simons
    • , Astri Bjørnetun Haugen
    •  & Henning Friis Poulsen

  • Letter |

    Active rotational motion of pre-strained materials is achieved by elastic deformations that break rotational symmetry around their axes.

    • Arthur Baumann
    • , Antoni Sánchez-Ferrer
    •  & Igor M. Kulić

  • Article |

    Electrostrain, an important value for actuators, larger than 1% is only achieved in single crystals. Here, a pseudo-ternary polycrystalline ferroelectric with spontaneous lattice strain has 1.3% electrostrain, which may enable cheaper piezoelectrics.

    • Bastola Narayan
    • , Jaskaran Singh Malhotra
    •  & Rajeev Ranjan

  • Letter |

    Films based on π-stacked carbon nitride polymers are shown to bend rapidly and jump up to 10,000 times their thickness as a result of minimal variations—induced by changes in the ambient humidity or temperature—of absorbed water.

    • Hiroki Arazoe
    • , Daigo Miyajima
    •  & Takuzo Aida

  • News & Views |

    Shape memory alloys have been developed that are free of functional fatigue, a key step in obtaining versatile actuators.

    • David Dye

  • Research Highlights |

    • Luigi Martiradonna

  • News & Views |

    Reversible strains up to 14% driven by changes in temperature or electric field have been realized in a thin film of bismuth ferrite oxide.

    • Antoni Planes
    •  & Lluís Mañosa

  • Letter |

    A requirement for the reversible mechanical actuation of liquid-crystal elastomers is macroscale alignment. However, current processing techniques do not achieve reliable and robust alignment, which limits the practical use of these materials as actuators and artificial muscles. It is now shown that by introducing polymers with exchangeable covalent bonds, liquid-crystal elastomers can be easily processed and aligned, and subsequently remodelled.

    • Zhiqiang Pei
    • , Yang Yang
    •  & Yan Ji

  • News & Views |

    Three-dimensional ordering in liquid-crystalline polymers is induced by the photopolymerization of a mixture of mesogens sandwiched between two patterned substrates. By incorporating an infrared-sensitive dye in the mixture, polymer films that undergo reversible shape deformations on heating are formed.

    • Gustavo Fernández

  • Letter |

    Superparamagnetic nanoparticles under an external magnetic field align in the field’s direction to minimize magnetic-dipole interactions. By modulating and fixing the alignment of magnetic nanoparticles in polymeric microcomponents through photopolymerization, magnetic nanocomposite microactuators were programmed to undergo complex motion, such as anisotropic bending and crawling.

    • Jiyun Kim
    • , Su Eun Chung
    •  & Sunghoon Kwon

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