Chen Tao and Zhang Jiawei researchers of Ningbo Institute of materials, CAS have made a series of progress in the construction of bionic anisotropic hydrogels and their applications.

Polymer hydrogel driver is a new type of intelligent material which can produce reversible deformation or volume change to external stimuli (light, heat, chemistry, electricity, etc.) As a kind of soft and wet material similar to biological tissue, hydrogel actuators have great potential applications in soft robots, artificial muscles, artificial valves and other fields For this reason, researcher Chen Tao and researcher Zhang Jiawei of the intelligent polymer materials team of Ningbo Institute of materials technology and engineering, Chinese Academy of sciences have carried out a series of works By constructing asymmetrical anisotropic hydrogels and their composite systems, they realized the versatile function of biomimetic hydrogel drivers Through selective partial reduction of graphene oxide poly (N-isopropylacrylamide), researchers have obtained a "bionic gripper" (adv funct Mater 2016, 26, 8670), which can perform complex three-dimensional deformation under various external stimuli such as pH, temperature, near-infrared and ionic strength On the basis of long-term research on intelligent driving and intelligent discoloration, researchers have developed a new intelligent bionic hydrogel (Adv Funct Mater 2018, 28) with 3D complex driving and intelligent color changing function 1704568) to overcome the defect that the hydrogel driver is difficult to drive away from the water environment, the J Mater Chem C 2018, 6, can be successfully actuated in various environments such as water, oil and air through the construction of double layer hydrogel internal water recycling system 1320); in addition, driving and shape memory are combined as the force source of shape memory materials to realize the controllable adjustment of material deformation (chem Commun 2018, 54, 1229) The above work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51773215, 21774138, 21644009), Zhejiang Natural Science Foundation (ly17b040003, ly17b040004), key research project of Frontier Science of Chinese Academy of Sciences (qyzdb-ssw-slh036) and youth innovation promotion association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2017337).