Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 28, 2023 - July 01, 2023
In the field of soft robotics, hydrogels are used as actuator materials due to their elasticity and light weight. Photolithography is widely used for 3D modeling of hydrogels, but most light-curing agents are biologically toxic. We proposed to fabricate 3D objects by assembling microgels composed of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAm) by relative antimagnetic assembly. NIPAm is expected to be temperature responsive, and laser heating can partially shrink microgel aggregates. In this work, we constructed a heating system using a near-infrared laser and attempted to actuate the microgel aggregates. Initially, the microgel aggregate was not heated to a temperature high enough to shrink because the light absorption efficiency of the microgels was low. Then, gold nanorods were added to improve the light absorption, and the microgel aggregate was successfully deformed by laser irradiation.
