3D printed hydrogel stretches 1100% for soft robots

A team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University developed a post-printing treatment that boosts DLP-printed hydrogel stretch from 68% to 1100% and strength to 3.7 MPa. They used it to print pneumatic actuators, a gripper and two walking and crawling robots; the work was published in Nature Communications.

• Stretch rose from 68% to 1100%, strength from 0.7 to 3.7 MPa
• Treatment improved print resolution from 55 to 37 μm
• A gripper of three actuators lifted an egg yolk
• A worm-like robot pushed a 10 g payload with about 0.1 N of thrust