New hydrogel can walk in water

materialsscienceandengineering:

New hydrogel can walk in water

In research published in Nature Materials, a team led by scientists from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan has developed a new hydrogel that works like an artificial muscle – quickly stretching and contracting in response to changing temperature. The scientists have used this polymer to build an L-shaped object that slowly walks forward as the temperature is varied.
Hydrogels are polymers that can maintain large quantities of water within their networks. Because of this, they can swell and shrink in response to environmental stimuli such as voltage, heat and acidity. In this sense, they are similar to plant cells, which are able to change shape as the amount of water within them changes in response to environmental conditions.
Most hydrogels only do this very slowly, absorbing and excreting water to either expand or shrink in volume. In contrast, the hydrogel developed by the RIKEN team does not contract equally in all directions. Instead, it contracts in one dimension while expanding in another, meaning it can change shape repeatedly without absorbing or excreting water, acting like an artificial muscle.

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