Optical fibre taper-enabled waveguide photoactuators

Photoactuators have attracted significant interest for soft robot and gripper applications, yet most of them rely on free-space illumination, which requires a line-of-site low-loss optical path. While waveguide photoactuators can overcome this limitation, their actuating performances are fundamental...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2022-01, Vol.13 (1), p.363-363, Article 363
Main Authors: Xiao, Jianliang, Zhou, Tao, Yao, Ni, Ma, Shuqi, Pan, Chenxinyu, Wang, Pan, Fu, Haoran, Liu, Haitao, Pan, Jing, Yu, Longteng, Wang, Shipeng, Yang, Wenzhen, Tong, Limin, Zhang, Lei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/301/1005/1006
639/624/399
Angles (geometry)
Bending
Deformation
Efficiency
Embedding
Energy
Energy consumption
Fibers
Flux density
Glass substrates
Gold
Graphene
Grippers
Humanities and Social Sciences
Light
multidisciplinary
Nanorods
Optical coupling
Optical fibers
Performance enhancement
Polydimethylsiloxane
Response time
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Tapering
Thickness
Waveguides
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Summary:Photoactuators have attracted significant interest for soft robot and gripper applications, yet most of them rely on free-space illumination, which requires a line-of-site low-loss optical path. While waveguide photoactuators can overcome this limitation, their actuating performances are fundamentally restricted by the nature of standard optical fibres. Herein, we demonstrated miniature photoactuators by embedding optical fibre taper in a polydimethylsiloxane/Au nanorod-graphene oxide photothermal film. The special geometric features of the taper endow the designed photoactuator with microscale active layer thickness, high energy density and optical coupling efficiency. Hence, our photoactuator show large bending angles (>270°), fast response (1.8 s for 180° bending), and low energy consumption (
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-022-28021-4