Voltage-Induced Wrinkle Performance in a Hydrogel by Dielectric Elastomer Actuation

Hydrogel is a type of soft smart material and is responsive to stimuli. In the development of actuation in hydrogel, electrical actuation features a fast and universal strategy which is favored in the engineering system. Due to the difficulty in direct electrical actuation in hydrogel, in this study, an indirect actuation was attained via a dielectric elastomer. An aligned wrinkle pattern was obtained in the hydrogel upon a direct-current voltage, and it is reversible. The morphology and nonlinear mechanics of the electro-wrinkling deformation was characterized and analyzed. The optical property of the wrinkle in hydrogel was investigated, demonstrating a tunable blurring effect in optics. The electro-wrinkling performance offers a potential application with soft and tunable optical property in hydrogel-based actuators.

[1]  K. Fuwa,et al.  The Physical Basis of Analytical Atomic Absorption Spectrometry. The Pertinence of the Beer-Lambert Law. , 1963 .

[2]  T. Park.  Temperature modulated protein release from pH/temperature-sensitive hydrogels. , 1999, Biomaterials.

[3]  A. Münster,et al.  Chemical Instability Induced by an Electric Field , 2000 .

[4]  Robin H. Liu,et al.  Functional hydrogel structures for autonomous flow control inside microfluidic channels , 2000, Nature.

[5]  Ron Pelrine,et al.  Multifunctional electroelastomer roll actuators and their application for biomimetic walking robots , 2003, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring.

[6]  L. Mahadevan,et al.  Geometry and physics of wrinkling. , 2003, Physical review letters.

[7]  Liang Dong,et al.  pH-adaptive microlenses using pinned liquid-liquid interfaces actuated by pH-responsive hydrogel , 2006 .

[8]  N. C. Goulbourne,et al.  On the dynamic electromechanical loading of dielectric elastomer membranes , 2008 .

[9]  A. Jagota,et al.  Mechanically tunable dry adhesive from wrinkled elastomers , 2008 .

[10]  G. Kofod.  The static actuation of dielectric elastomer actuators: how does pre-stretch improve actuation? , 2008 .

[11]  Zhigang Suo,et al.  Formation of creases on the surfaces of elastomers and gels , 2009 .

[12]  Pei-Chun Lin,et al.  Harnessing Surface Wrinkle Patterns in Soft Matter , 2010 .

[13]  J. Burdick,et al.  Solvent induced transition from wrinkles to creases in thin film gels with depth-wise crosslinking gradients , 2010 .

[14]  Rui Huang,et al.  Swell-induced surface instability of confined hydrogel layers on substrates , 2010 .

[15]  S. Van Vlierberghe,et al.  Biopolymer-based hydrogels as scaffolds for tissue engineering applications: a review. , 2011, Biomacromolecules.

[16]  Zicai Zhu,et al.  Effect of mechanical pre-stretch on the stabilization of dielectric elastomer actuation , 2011 .

[17]  Z. Suo,et al.  Highly stretchable and tough hydrogels , 2012, Nature.

[18]  Huajian Gao,et al.  Mechanics of morphological instabilities and surface wrinkling in soft materials: a review , 2012 .

[19]  Nicolas C. Pégard,et al.  Wrinkles and deep folds as photonic structures in photovoltaics , 2012, Nature Photonics.

[20]  D. Clarke,et al.  Tunable lenses using transparent dielectric elastomer actuators. , 2013, Optics express.

[21]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  A Resilient, Untethered Soft Robot , 2014 .

[22]  Zhigang Suo,et al.  Stretchable and transparent hydrogels as soft conductors for dielectric elastomer actuators , 2014 .

[23]  Samuel Rosset,et al.  Tunable millimeter-wave phase shifter based on dielectric elastomer actuation , 2014 .

[24]  Lihua Jin,et al.  Bifurcation Diagrams for the Formation of Wrinkles or Creases in Soft Bilayers , 2015 .

[25]  Bo Li,et al.  Experimental Study on Electromechanical Failure of Dielectric Elastomer Actuator , 2015 .

[26]  Lei Liu,et al.  Voltage-induced crumpling of a dielectric membrane , 2015 .

[27]  Lihua Jin,et al.  Smoothening creases on surfaces of strain-stiffening materials , 2015 .

[28]  Alexandre Poulin,et al.  Dielectric elastomer actuator for mechanical loading of 2D cell cultures. , 2016, Lab on a chip.

[29]  Teng Yong Ng,et al.  Light intensity controlled wrinkling patterns in photo-thermal sensitive hydrogels , 2016 .

[30]  Gih-Keong Lau,et al.  Tunable window device based on micro-wrinkling of nanometric zinc-oxide thin film on elastomer. , 2016, Optics letters.

[31]  Matteo Cianchetti,et al.  Soft robotics: Technologies and systems pushing the boundaries of robot abilities , 2016, Science Robotics.

[32]  Wrinkling of structured thin films via contrasted materials. , 2016, Soft matter.

[33]  Shuhai Jia,et al.  Voltage‐induced wrinkling behavior of dielectric elastomer , 2016 .

[34]  Wenhan Huang,et al.  Bio-inspired sensitive and reversible mechanochromisms via strain-dependent cracks and folds , 2016, Nature Communications.

[35]  Xuanhe Zhao,et al.  Hydraulic hydrogel actuators and robots optically and sonically camouflaged in water , 2017, Nature Communications.

[36]  Wenjie Sun,et al.  Identification and characterization of the out-of-plane resonance in a dielectric elastomer to drive an agile robotic cube , 2017 .

[37]  S. Qu,et al.  Morphology of Voltage-Triggered Ordered Wrinkles of a Dielectric Elastomer Sheet , 2017 .

[38]  Xuanhe Zhao,et al.  Multimodal Surface Instabilities in Curved Film–Substrate Structures , 2017 .

[39]  Z. Suo,et al.  Organic liquid-crystal devices based on ionic conductors , 2017 .

[40]  Kyu-Jin Cho,et al.  Hygrobot: A self-locomotive ratcheted actuator powered by environmental humidity , 2018, Science Robotics.

[41]  Zhihui Zhang,et al.  Design and fabrication of nanofibrillated cellulose-containing bilayer hydrogel actuators with temperature and near infrared laser responses. , 2018, Journal of materials chemistry. B.

[42]  C. Plesse,et al.  Stretchable composite monolayer electrodes for low voltage dielectric elastomer actuators , 2018 .

[43]  Metin Sitti,et al.  Small-scale soft-bodied robot with multimodal locomotion , 2018, Nature.