Biomimetic thermoresponsive superstructures by colloidal soft-and-hard co-assembly.

ABSTRACT: Soft-and-hard hybrid structures are ubiquitous in biological systems and have inspired the design of man-made mechanical devices, actuators, and robots. The realization of these structures, however, has been challenging at microscale, where material integration and actuation become exceedingly less practical. Here, through simple colloidal assembly, we create microscale superstructures consisting of soft and hard materials, which, serving as microactuators, have thermoresponsive shape-transforming properties. In this case, anisotropic metal-organic framework (MOF) particles as the hard components are integrated with liquid droplets, forming spine-mimicking colloidal chains via valence-limited assembly. The chains, with alternating soft and hard segments, are referred to as MicroSpine and c

SUBMITTER: Lyu D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10313167 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature