Solvent‐Driven Biomimetic Soft Sensors and Actuators

Abstract The emergence of soft actuators that exhibit large, complex, programmable, and reversible shape deformation is of fundamental interest having potential applications in optics, medicals, and robotics fields. However, existing soft actuators are generally driven by only few given external stimuli such as temperature, humidity, or light which limit their interactions with their surroundings. Here, biomimetic soft actuators that respond to a variety of solvent vapors via programmable motion studied by Finite Element Modeling (FEM) are presented. A versatile micromachining process is used to fabricate these biomimetic soft actuators able to bend, curve, and twist in different manners according to their designs mimicking stamen, seed pots, and petals of Bauhinia variegate and Dendrobium orchids. The kinetic parameters of the transient response and recovery actuation are taken as the input feature in principal component analysis (PCA) to discriminate analyte molecules. Finally, to broaden the accessible 3D motions and thus functions of these smart actuators, an origami approach is employed to provide further flexibility and novel controlled structural changes in continuum structures such as snake‐like soft actuators, walkers, and grippers.