Abstract
The ability of natural living organisms, transferring deformations into locomotion, has attracted researchers’ increasing attention in building bionic actuators and smart systems. As a typical category of functional materials, magnetoresponsive composite elastomers, comprised of flexible elastomer matrices and rigid magnetic particles, have been playing critical roles in this field of research due to their dynamic changes in response to applied magnetic field direction and intensity. The magnetically driven bionic actuators based on magnetoresponsive composite elastomers have been developed to achieve some specific functions in some special fields. For instance, under the control of the applied magnetic field, the bionic actuators can not only generate time-varying deformation, but also motion in diverse environments, suggesting new possibilities for target gripping and directional transporting especially in the field of artificial soft robots and biological engineering. Therefore, this review comprehensively introduces the component, fabrication, and bionic locomotion application of magnetoresponsive composite elastomers. Moreover, existing challenges and future perspectives are further discussed.
Highlights
The excellent shape-shifting abilities and capabilities of transforming deformations into diverse motions to adapt themselves to complex survival environments of some creatures, such as caterpillars[1], inchworms[2], jellyfishes[3], nematodes[4], snakes[5], octopus[6], have inspired scientists to devote themselves to designing bionic actuators that can deform and motion in response to an external stimulus (Fig. 1)
Inspired by the shape-morphing locomotion of living organisms, the bionic actuators based on magnetoresponsive composite elastomers which can deform and motion in response to the external magnetic field have been developed
Despite the progress that has been achieved, there are still some challenges and difficulties in the development of bionic locomotion actuators based on magnetoresponsive composite elastomers
Summary
The excellent shape-shifting abilities and capabilities of transforming deformations into diverse motions to adapt themselves to complex survival environments of some creatures, such as caterpillars[1], inchworms[2], jellyfishes[3], nematodes[4], snakes[5], octopus[6], have inspired scientists to devote themselves to designing bionic actuators that can deform and motion in response to an external stimulus (Fig. 1). Magnetoresponsive composite elastomers for bionic locomotion applications are mainly composed of flexible elastomeric matrices like natural rubber[20,21,22], silicone rubber[23,24,25], polyurethane rubber[26,27,28,29], polybutadiene rubber[30], and embedded hard micro-sized or nano-sized magnetic particles. To improve their mechanical performance or endow them with exceptional characteristics, a small quantity of additives is admixed. Some existing challenges and future perspectives about the development of magnetoresponsive composite elastomers are further discussed in the fifth section
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