Bioinspired polysiloxane/WS2 composites with stretchable and near-infrared light remote-controlled self-healing abilities for deployable deformation actuators

Abstract

Despite tremendous advancement of actuators based on self-healing polymeric composites, inevitable trade-offs in maintaining sensitive stimuli response and mechanical and self-healing properties are still left in suspense. Inspired by the character of butterfly wings, herein, we proposed a brand-new strategy to design polysiloxane composites with bioinspired network structure, which consists of tannic acid modified photothermal reagent tungsten disulfide nanosheets as vein and self-healing polysiloxane elastomers with multiple dynamic bonds as embedded membrane. High dense hydrogen bonds between nanosheets and elastomers enable interfaces to enhance interfacial strength of composite. The elaborate bioinspired network was employed as an essential role to endow composites with conspicuous stretchability (1146%), and near-infrared light (NIR) remote-controlled self-healing efficiency (97%). Moreover, the composite with conspicuous bioinspired network structure is connected with low coefficient of thermal expansion film by hydrogen bonds gathered around the interface, which endows deployable deformation actuator with a remarkably fast NIR response (7.50 s) due to bioinspired heat conduction network pathway. This work offers a versatile bioinspired strategy for design of self-healing actuators with conspicuous responding deformation and mechanical properties that enables an application to a wide range of flexible and smart devices.