A warm hand is enough to drive motion in tiny Salmonella-inspired robots that harness molecular-level dynamic bonding.
A team of researchers from China and the U.S. came together to design soft robots with a coordination-motorized oscillator (CoMO) that can make self-sustained micromovements by harvesting small amounts of energy from sunlight or body heat. At the heart of this innovation is a new supramolecular polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based elastic polymer dynamically crosslinked by Eu3+ at the center.
The findings are published in Angewandte Chemie.