Abstract
Magneto-active soft machines capable of magnetically controllable shape-morphing and locomotion have diverse promising applications such as untethered biomedical robots. However, existing magneto-active soft machines often show simple structures and limited deformation range. These technologies also suffer because mass production of the magneto-active machines is unavailable. Here, we propose a direct 2D-to-4D fabrication strategy that transforms 2D magnetic sheets into 3D magneto-active soft machines with customized geometries by incorporating origami folding. The method can be easily adapted to roll-to-roll processing. This approach enables a variety of unique characteristics of magneto-origami machines, including large-magnitude deploying, sequential folding into predesigned shapes and multivariant actuation modes (e.g., contraction, bending, rotation and rolling locomotion). We leverage these abilities to demonstrate a few potential applications: an electronic robot capable of on-demand deploying and wireless charging, a mechanical 8-3 encoder, and a quadruped robot for cargo-release tasks. Our work paves a way for the high-throughput fabrication of magneto-active soft machines with multi-functionalities.
HIGH-THROUGHPUT ROLL-TO-ROLL PRODUCTION OF BIO-FUNCTIONALIZED POLYMER COMPONENTS