Plant-Morphing Strategies and Plant-Inspired Soft Actuators Fabricated by Biomimetic Four-Dimensional Printing: A Review

Frontiers in Materials

Luquan Ren¹  Zhengyi Song¹  Qingping Liu¹  Xueli Zhou¹  Bingqian Li¹  Kunyang Wang¹  Lei Ren² 

[1] Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering, Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, China;School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom;

关键词: soft actuators;    biomimetic 4D printing;    bioinspired;    plant-morphing strategies;    plant-inspired soft actuators;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmats.2021.651521

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

For prey, seeding, and protection, plants exhibit ingenious adaptive motions that respond autonomously to environmental stimuli by varying cellular organization, anisotropic orientation of cellulose fibers, mechanical instability design, etc. Notably, plants do not leverage muscle and nerves to produce and regulate their motions. In contrast, they harvest energy from the ambient environment and compute through embodied intelligence. These characteristics make them ideal candidates for application in self-morphing devices. Four-dimensional (4D) printing is a bottom-up additive manufacturing method that builds objects with the ability to change shape/properties in a predetermined manner. A versatile motion design catalog is required to predict the morphing processes and final states of the printed parts. This review summarizes the morphing and actuation mechanisms of plants and concludes with the recent development of 4D-printed smart materials inspired by the locomotion and structures of plant systems. We provide analyses of the challenges and our visions of biomimetic 4D printing, hoping to boost its application in soft robotics, smart medical devices, smart parts in aerospace, etc.

【 授权许可】

Unknown