Bioinspired Phototropic MXene‐Reinforced Soft Tubular Actuators for Omnidirectional Light‐Tracking and Adaptive Photovoltaics

Abstract Endowing artificial advanced materials and systems with biomimetic self‐regulatory intelligence is of paramount significance for the development of somatosensory soft robotics and adaptive optoelectronics. Herein, a bioinspired phototropic MXene‐reinforced soft tubular actuator is reported that exhibits omnidirectional self‐orienting ability and is capable of quickly sensing, continuously tracking, and adaptively interacting with incident light in all zenithal and azimuthal angles of 3D space. The novelty of the soft tubular actuator lies in three aspects: 1) the new polymerizable MXene nanomonomer shows high compatibility with liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) matrices and can be in situ…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 51973155, 52173181
• NS
  Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City

  Award: 20JCYBJC00810