Acoustic Mixed Photothermal Actuators for Multimodal Amphibious Robots

ABSTRACT Fabricating high performance light‐driven soft actuators remains challenging due to the viscosity limited dispersion of photothermal agents, which induces structural defects and attenuates the resulting photomechanical response. Herein, an acoustic vibration mixing (AVM) strategy is introduced to achieve an exceptionally homogeneous and optimized loading integration of polydopamine (PDA) and polypyrrole (PPy) within a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix. This processing paradigm ensures uniform thermal distribution and robust photomechanical transduction, enabling a bilayered microrobot to execute versatile locomotion modes. Experimental results demonstrate that our actuator achieves a 100° deflection at ∼350 mW/cm 2, and the microrobot can execute terrestrial crawling (0.1 BL/s), high‐speed rolling (7.5 BL/s), and Marangoni‐driven aquatic gliding (0.41 BL/s). Significantly, the superior photothermal conversion efficiency empowers the robot to generate sufficient torque to overcome interfacial capillary pinning, thereby facilitating seamless bidirectional transitions between land and water. This work provides a practical fabrication paradigm for multifunctional soft robotic systems designed for complex, cross‐domain environments.

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Publication Details

Journal
Advanced Materials Technologies
Published
2026-07-23
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.71201
Primary Topic
Micro and Nano Robotics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Acoustic Mixed Photothermal Actuators for Multimodal Amphibious Robots

Xin Tu, Shulan Jiang, Peiyang Huang, Xiang Li et al.
Advanced Materials Technologies
Micro and Nano Robotics
article

Acoustic Mixed Photothermal Actuators for Multimodal Amphibious Robots

Xin Tu, Shulan Jiang, Peiyang Huang, Xiang Li, Min Li, Wenbo Ma, Xiaobin Zhan
article en

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fabricating high performance light‐driven soft actuators remains challenging due to the viscosity limited dispersion of photothermal agents, which induces structural defects and attenuates the resulting photomechanical response. Herein, an acoustic vibration mixing (AVM) strategy is introduced to achieve an exceptionally homogeneous and optimized loading integration of polydopamine (PDA) and polypyrrole (PPy) within a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix. This processing paradigm ensures uniform thermal distribution and robust photomechanical transduction, enabling a bilayered microrobot to execute versatile locomotion modes. Experimental results demonstrate that our actuator achieves a 100° deflection at ∼350 mW/cm 2, and the microrobot can execute terrestrial crawling (0.1 BL/s), high‐speed rolling (7.5 BL/s), and Marangoni‐driven aquatic gliding (0.41 BL/s). Significantly, the superior photothermal conversion efficiency empowers the robot to generate sufficient torque to overcome interfacial capillary pinning, thereby facilitating seamless bidirectional transitions between land and water. This work provides a practical fabrication paradigm for multifunctional soft robotic systems designed for complex, cross‐domain environments.

Advanced Materials Technologies
China University of Geosciences (CN), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province
Life below water
Openalex Percentile: Top 12%
Micro and Nano Robotics
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Acoustic Mixed Photothermal Actuators for Multimodal Amphibious Robots — Xin Tu, Shulan Jiang, et al. · Advanced Materials Technologies (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS