Chinese Team Develops STERS System for Evolving Hydrogels
Researchers developed a light-triggered system named STERS, which utilizes liquid metal particles to initiate gradual, self-sustaining chemical reactions, enabling a hydrogel to alter its structure over time.
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According to the South China Morning Post, a team has engineered a light-activated hydrogel capable of evolving alongside living tissue, a development that could potentially aid in creating more flexible brain-computer interfaces and robots.
The team's creation, known as STERS, is a light-triggered system that employs liquid metal particles to produce slow, self-sustaining chemical reactions. These reactions permit a hydrogel to modify its structure across time.
In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Matter on September 4, the team stated that this new method allows for programmable, lifelike morphological evolution within hydrogels. This evolution can occur across scales ranging from microscopic to macroscopic, spanning durations from minutes to weeks, and involving single to multiple transformation cycles.
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