Soft Robotics with Biodegradable, Self-Healing, Recyclable Conductive Coatings

The advancement of robotics has made giant steps in recent years. For example, humanoid robots now have motion systems that are more advanced than those of most humans, as demonstrated by recent developments with Atlas by Boston Dynamics. However, robots still lack many fundamental properties intrinsic to human architecture. They are still constructed from materials far from human-like in terms of biodegradability, self-healing, and lightweight characteristics. Humanoid robots face a material science challenge to evolve into versions that truly resemble humans.<br/>Considering this, we propose self-healable, recyclable, and biodegradable electrically conductive coatings engineered as human-mimicking skins.[1] These coatings are based on green conductive inks that combine a soft biodegradable vitrimer binder with carbon nanomaterials and are applied simply by spray coating. The vitrimer ensures satisfying adhesion to diverse substrates and flexibility, conformability, self-healing, and recyclability of the conductive layer. This material is a sustainable alternative to standard conductive inks for flexible electronics and soft robotics. Tests for the live monitoring of SoftHand3, the grasping system many robots use worldwide, have yielded promising results. Incorporating biodegradable, self-healing, and lightweight ingredients advances materials for robots towards truly mimicking intrinsic human properties. The green nature of the ink, which uses only water and ethanol, along with its biodegradability and recyclability, makes it an appealing material to address the sustainability issues in today's robotics sector.<br/><br/><b>References:</b><br/>[1] Cataldi, P.; et al., Self-Healing, Recyclable, Biodegradable, Electrically Conductive Vitrimer Coating for Soft Robotics. Advanced Sustainable Systems 2023, 7, 2300220.