基于光响应高分子材料的柔性执行器件

Light-Driven Soft Actuators Based on Photoresponsive Polymer Materials

光响应高分子材料是指吸收光能后,能够在分子内或分子间产生化学或物理变化的一类功能高分子材料。伴随着分子结构与形态的改变,材料表现出某些宏观性质的变化,如在光刺激下发生形状、颜色或者折射率的变化等。光能具有环保性、远程可控性、瞬时性等优异的特性,因此光响应性高分子材料受到了越来越多的关注。通过合理的设计,光响应高分子材料可以产生光致形变或具有形状记忆功能,完成诸如伸缩、弯曲、爬行、转动等一些复杂的运动,并且可以制作成多种柔性智能执行器,在人工肌肉、微型机器人、微泵、微阀等领域有着广泛的应用前景。本文综述了近年来具有光响应特性的液晶高分子、凝胶以及形状记忆高分子等材料在光驱动型柔性执行器方面的研究进展,阐述了各种执行器的运行机理,并展望了该领域的发展前景。

Photoresponsive polymeric materials are a kind of functional polymers that can absorb photo energy and undergo intra-or inter-molecular physical or chemical transformations.Accompanying the changes on molecular structures and configurations,the materials exhibit the variations on certain macroscopic properties such as shape,color,or refractive index in response to light.Since light is an environment-friendly,remotely controllable and instantly operatable stimulus,photoresponsive polymers attract more and more attention.By rational design,photoresponsive polymers can generate light-driven deformations or have shape-memory properties,thus they have been led to undergo sophisticated movements such as contraction/expansion,bending,creeping,and rotation and further assembled to various smart soft actuators,which have wide applications in artificial muscles,microrobots,micropumps,microvalves and so on.This article summarizes the recent progress of light-driven soft actuators made of photoresponsive liquid crystal polymers,gels,and shape-memory polymers.Their driven mechanism and development prospect are also described.