Soft materials with dynamic nature are currently in the limelight of research and have been actively adopted to numerous applications ranging from cosmetics, food products, and packaging materials to robotics, energy devices, and biomedical applications. Compared with hard materials, smart soft materials exhibit advantageous properties in terms of flexibility, moldability, processability, biocompatibility, etc. Our main interest lies in creating new functionalities in nanoscience-based soft materials including, but not limited to, liquid crystals, liquid metals, hydrogels, polymers and elastomers. The marriage of soft materials with nanoscience could afford nanosized soft frameworks to direct the self-assembly of diverse nanomaterials, which represents a new paradigm for the development of advanced multifunctional, programmable, and reconfigurable materials. Furthermore, the nanomaterials could endow soft materials with novel functionalities, offering new opportunities for applications in the fields of responsive biomaterials, photonics, optoelectronics and beyond.
Light‐triggered phenomena are omnipresent in a nature. Human vision is enabled by such a light-driven process, i.e., photoisomerization of retinal. Phototropic and heliotropic motions in plants (e.g., sunflowers pivoting their faces to follow the sun) are driven by photoisomerization of phytochromes. Soft materials, including liquid crystals, polymers, gels, and biological materials, endowed with light-responsiveness have recently emerged as multifunctional advanced materials for diverse applications. The great interest in such systems arises from their unique combination of contactless energy delivery with the ability to modulate at high spatial and temporal resolution. We focus on developing photoactive soft materials and manipulating soft materials with light. The functionalities of photoactive soft materials will be wirelessly programmed to yield life-like reconfigurable materials and photoswitchable systems. Light‐driven molecular events will be cooperatively translated leading to dynamic and controllable macroscopic photophysical and photochemical changes that can be harnessed for the purpose of enabling light-responsive smart soft matter technologies.
In nature, living organisms exploit soft tissues and compliant structures to move in complex environments. Soft robotics, i.e., engineering robots out of soft materials, are expected to create universal and customizable machines that are capable of performing a wide variety of tasks and actively adapting themselves to changing conditions within these tasks. Research in soft robotics promises to impact a variety of fields in science and engineering and has many applications in areas of societal need. The complexity in developing bioinspired soft robotics is increased by the need of mimicking biological system capabilities in being energetically efficient, in changing their morphology, in adapting their body and functionality in their lifetime, by growing, or even by a morphological environmental adaptation. We focus on designing functional soft materials for soft robotics with the emphasis on the development of bioinspired intelligence as well as light-fueled, programmable and reconfigurable advanced technologies.
Color change permits camouflage against different backgrounds. Many cephalopods such as cuttlefish, and some terrestrial amphibians such as chameleons can rapidly change color and pattern, which promises them remarkable camouflage ability to cope with environmental changes occurring over a range of spatial and temporal scales. Color change can be also viewed as an adaptive ‘solution’ to the often-conflicting demands of camouflage, communication and thermoregulation. Taking inspiration from nature, we are interested in developing advanced adaptive color camouflage technologies based on smart color-changing soft materials, which could help an object adapt rapidly to the surroundings by intelligently responding to the environmental variations such as temperature, humidity and solar irradiations. Adaptive camouflage provides concealment by making an object similar to its surroundings and effectively invisible with "illusory transparency" through accurate mimicry. Bioinspired adaptive camouflage technologies are expected to hold great potentials for many important applications.
Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, has emerged as a burgeoning and powerful technology for future advanced manufacturing systems. With the introduction of smart soft materials, the 3D-fabricated components are able to alter their shape or properties over time (the 4th dimension) as a response to the applied external stimuli, which gives rise to a new generation of interdisciplinary “4D Printing” technologies. Compared with the static objects created by 3D printing, 4D printing allows a 3D printed structure to change its configuration or function with time in response to external stimuli such as light, temperature, electric field, etc., which makes 3D printing alive. Our research interests focus on designing novel inks and new technologies for printing functional soft materials with locally tailored composition, structure, and properties, exploring their promising applications in areas of soft robotics, tactile sensors, wearable electronics and beyond.