4D Printing of Shapeshifting Devices

Hydrogel composite architectures that can change shape over time for use in smart textiles, soft electronics, medical devices, and tissue engineering Please get in touch to learn more about licensing opportunities for our 4D Printing technology. Please get in touch to learn more about licensing opportunities for our 4D Printing technology. Organisms, such as flowers and plants, have tissue compositions and microstructures creating dynamic morphologies that can shapeshift in response to changes in their environments. Researchers at the Wyss Institute have mimicked a variety of such dynamic shape changes like those performed by tendrils, leaves, and flowers in response to changes in humidity or temperature with innovative 4D-printed hydrogel composites. By aligning cellulose fibrils that are derived from wood in configurations that are predicted with a proprietary mathematical model in the 4D-printing process, the composite ink encodes anisotropic swelling and stiffness properties that c

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• Yoyo Yuan
• Zhi Zhang