Light- and Field-Controlled Diffusion, Ejection, Flow and Collection of Liquid at a Nanoporous Liquid Crystal Membrane

The robots of the future are envisioned to mirror us, seamlessly integrating themselves into our society as thinking, breathing and sweating beings. Yet, this entails many challenges in terms of our materials. To realize this vision, we need smart materials capable of replicating human bodily functions, such as sweating. Assistant Professor Danqing Liu, leading Research Lab of Human Interactive Materials, together with her  postdoctoral researcher Yuanyuan Zhan, have just published an Angewandte Chemie VIP (Very Important Paper) research communication on synthetic skins capable of sweating.

Zhan and Liu use their unique two-trigger strategy, using light and electricity, to make their polymer skin sweat on-demand. The light trigger stimulates the material to eject liquid and opens the gate (UV gating) for the electricity to trigger the “sweat” transport to the desired location(s). This allows for global or local artificial “sweating”. Zhan and Liu foresee their tunable “sweating” smart material and its unique trigger mechanisms playing a role in the development of more sophisticated human-robot tactile communication.

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