Tailoring Flexible Arrays for Artificial Cilia Actuators

Abstract

Artificial cilia actuators are described as responsive and actuatable cilia‐structured arrays that are mainly made of flexible polymers. Over the past few decades, researchers have investigated the features and functions of cilia in nature, and have developed a vast number of bio‐mimicked cilia based on these findings. Nowadays, great progresses are accomplished, including the optimization of the fabrication methods, the increase in the actuation approaches, and the promotion of the application fields. Artificial cilia are tailored to react to magnetics, electrics, light, acoustics, heat, or even multi‐stimulus, and are endowed with abilities of moving, sensing, carrying cargos, transporting, etc. These achievements create a great leap for artificial cilia actuators being applied in a huge scope of forefront fields, such as digital microfluidics, organ‐on‐chip systems, precision medicine, wearable electro‐devices, minimal robots, artificial intelligence, and so on.

Keywords

• bioinspired
• droplets
• microfluidics
• sensors
• soft actuators