Photo-Responsive Bilayer Soft Actuators Synergic Fluorescence and Shape Change Towards Biomimetic Untethered Camouflage Robots

Soft actuators synergic color and shape change behaviors are highly interesting and have a great potential to enable biomimetic robotic devices. However, it remains a grand challenge to achieve color and shape change behaviors on demand for emulating complicated activities of living creatures adjusting to surrounding environments. Herein, photo-responsive bilayer actuators synergic fluorescence and shape change behaviors are fabricated based on silica carbon dots (Si-CDs) and liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs). In the design, Si-CDs/polydimethylsiloxane composite film acting as a photochromic layer provides tunable fluorescence performance under ultraviolet while graphene/LCE composite film functioning as a photo-actuation layer affords reversible deformation under near-infrared. Thanks to stable fluorescence and photo-actuation behaviors of bilayer soft actuators, desired camouflage, and locomotion features are realized in untethered bio-inspired soft robots such as artificial flytrap and inchworm-inspired walkers by morphology engineering and driven manner manipulation. This work offers a toolbox for designing multifunctional photo-responsive soft actuators and promotes them towards untethered bio-inspired intelligent robotic devices.