Living eyelashes move, bend and move through complex twisting movements.
Scientists say that when light hitsmicrostructure, the basic building blocks of the liquid crystal elastomer are rearranged and the entire structure changes shape. It happens in the following way. First, the area where the light hits becomes transparent, which allows the light to penetrate deeper into the material, causing additional deformations. Second, as the material deforms and the shape changes, a new point on the column is exposed to light, causing that area to change shape as well.
“This internal and external feedback loop gives us a self-regulating material. As soon as you turn on the light, it does all its work,” says Shukong Li, co-author of the work.
The researchers note that scientists have triedcreate tiny artificial eyelashes for miniature robotic systems over a long period of time. Creating such structures smaller than a human hair typically requires multi-step processes and different stimuli to produce complex movements, limiting their wide-scale application.
The solution proposed in the study is the opposite.consists of only one material and requires one external stimulus. As the authors of the development note, the specific bends and movements of the material change along with its shape, making these simple structures infinitely reconfigurable and customizable. For example, in their work, the researchers demonstrated the movement of round, square, L- and T-shaped, and palm-shaped structures.
“We have shown that we can programchoreography of this dynamic dance by adapting a number of parameters including illumination angle, light intensity, molecular alignment, microstructure geometry, temperature, exposure intervals and duration,” says Michael Lerch, co-author of the paper.
Researchers believe that self-managed andprogrammable micron structures can be used for a range of applications, including soft robotics, biocompatible medical devices, and even dynamic information encryption.
Read more
Look at the "silent" drone with a new generation of ion propulsion
Flashes of energy for thousands of years of life: scientists have understood how they appear on the Sun
NASA has published the "sounds" of a black hole: anyone can listen to them