Issue 46, 2022

Effect of variations in manufacturing and material properties on the self-folding behaviors of hydrogel and elastomer bilayer structures

Abstract

The stimuli-responsive self-folding structure is ubiquitous in nature, for instance, the mimosa folds its leaves in response to external touch or heat, and the Venus flytrap snaps shut to trap the insect inside. Thus, modeling self-folding structures has been of great interest to predict the final configuration and understand the folding mechanism. Here, we apply a simple yet effective method to predict the folding angle of the temperature-responsive nanocomposite hydrogel/elastomer bilayer structure manufactured by 3D printing, which facilitates the study of the effect of the inevitable variations in manufacturing and material properties on folding angles by comparing the simulation results with the experimentally measured folding angles. The defining feature of our method is to use thermal expansion to model the temperature-responsive nanocomposite hydrogel rather than the nonlinear field theory of diffusion model that was previously applied. The resulted difference between the simulation and experimentally measured folding angle (i.e., error) is around 5%. We anticipate that our method could provide insight into the design, control, and prediction of 3D printing of stimuli-responsive shape morphing (i.e., 4D printing) that have potential applications in soft actuators, robots, and biomedical devices.

Graphical abstract: Effect of variations in manufacturing and material properties on the self-folding behaviors of hydrogel and elastomer bilayer structures

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 ส.ค. 2565
Accepted
01 พ.ย. 2565
First published
02 พ.ย. 2565

Soft Matter, 2022,18, 8771-8778

Author version available

Effect of variations in manufacturing and material properties on the self-folding behaviors of hydrogel and elastomer bilayer structures

J. Zhao, H. Kazemi, H. A. Kim and J. Bae, Soft Matter, 2022, 18, 8771 DOI: 10.1039/D2SM01104B

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements