Fabrication of micro-gel robot having soft-rigid hybrid structures driven by light

Abstract

This paper presents fabrication and actuation method of soft microrobot having hybrid structure. This hybrid structure enables multi-DOF actuation of the microrobot and complex movement like living microorganisms. In this paper, we show the concept of soft microrobot having soft-rigid hybrid structure and propose a fabrication and an actuation method of the robot. We use temperature responsive hydrogel, PNIPAAm as a soft microactuator. PNIPAAm swells water at low temperature and shrinks at high temperature. Thus, this volume change can be utilized as actuator by controlling the temperature. We succeeded in fabrication of the microrobot having soft-rigid hybrid structure using sacrificial layer process. For actuation of the microrobot, we mix PNIPAAm with graphene which has high photothermal conversion efficiency. We show the fabrication, release and partial actuation of the microrobot to show feasibility of the proposed microrobot having soft-rigid hybrid structure, in this paper.