A Photothermal Soft Actuator Based on MoS2 and PDMS

Abstract

Light driven actuators can remotely obtain the required energy and control signals from the light source without complex coupled instruments. Therefore, these actuators will have great application potential in the field of micro-robots and micro-machines. Photothermal driving method is an easy way to achieve light driving and it has characteristic of simple manufacturing with low cost. Here, we report a bilayer photothermal soft actuator based on molybdenum disulfide (MoS <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) and Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). This actuator has excellent photothermal bending during UV irradiation and a light-driven micro-gripper is manufactured using this photothermal soft actuator.