Recent advances in colour-tunable soft actuators

Abstract

In nature, some creatures have the capability to change shapes to adapt to ever-changing environments, which greatly inspire researchers to develop soft actuators. To endow soft actuators with capabilities to interact with environment and integrate more feedbacks is of great significance. Colour-tunable soft actuators that provide colour change feedbacks have therefore attracted extensive attention. Based on either chemical-colour or structural-colour based materials, a variety of colour-tunable soft actuators enabling shape deformations (or locomotion) and colour changes have been prepared and hold promise for applications in soft robotics and biomedical devices. This review summarizes the recent advances of colour-tunable soft actuators, with emphasis on their colour-change mechanisms and highlighting their applications. Existing challenges and future perspectives on colour-tunable soft actuators are presented.