INS3-0023
Polymeric Micro-Motors with Switchable Locomotion
Topic
S3. Processing / Fabrications (Emerging Horizons in Polymer Processing and Fabrication)
When and Where
Sep 30, 2026
11:50 - 12:15
Room 104
Session Chairs
Sungmin PARK
Presenter(s)
Chunhong Ye (Shanghaitech University)
Co-Author(s)
Abstract
Soft untethered motors have attracted intense attention due to its potential applications for mixing, sorting, and transportation. However, it is still challenge to precisely modulate the motion performance as reducing the dimension to microscale level. Here, we explored biomimetic soft micro-motors with programmable motion from responsive polymers and liquid crystal elastomers. First, anisotropic structures were introduced into polymer micro-sheets, which exhibited stimulus induced reconfiguration 3D morphologies, such as tubes, rolls, even biomimetic orchid. Then, by taking the switchable 3D structure as a motor, and expelling bubbles as a propulsion force. Dynaminc switchable motion of the soft motor are achieved, including switchable trajectory and velocity enabled by the 3D-to-3D reconfiguration. Moreover, liquid crystal elastomer-based motors with multiple modes of motion, including crawling, jump and swimmer are achieved from anisotropic shape-morphing of LCE sheets via rational design of 2D asymmetric geometries. The soft-motors with the merits of soft and switchable motion could boost the potential applications in miniaturized robotics, biomimetic devices, and transportation/fluids mixture.
