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technical paper
Reprogrammable Liquid metal/NdFeB/Silicone Composite Magnetic Elastomer
Hard-magnetic soft materials has a lot of application scenarios in the field of soft robots and flexible sensors. But, due to the coupling of magnetization process and
manufacturing process, the functions of these devices can not be changed. Therefore, the technique of repeatedly program magnetic anisotropy on magnetic elastomer is of great
significance for changing the functions of magnetic soft robot and sensor. This paper presented a reprogrammable mangetic elastomer based on
Liquid-metal/NdFeB/Silicone composites. The NdFeB particles wrapped in gallium can be re-orientated by thermal-ssisted magnetic programming(Figs.1a-1c). Thus, the magnetization
profile can be reconfigurated on the elastomer(Fig.1d).X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis shows the phase composition of gallium, Silicone and Nd2Fe14B (Fig.2a). The elstomer's magnetic
properties are tested by the comprehensive physical property measurement system (PPMS). The moment-temperature (M-T) curve shows the material's moment jumps at 303 K(the melt
point of gallium)(Fig.2b). And the moment-magnetic field (M-H) curves indicate that the elastomer exhibit hard and soft magnetic properties respectively (Fig.2c), when the temperatureis
lower (293 K) or higher (313 K) than the phase-transition temperature of gallium. A hexagon-shape robot was manufactured and then programmed to two modals of grasping and walking
respectively(Figs.2d and 2e).The experimental results verify the reprogrammability of the proposed composite elastomer. The elastomer is expected to be used to manufacture multi-modal
magnetic soft robot.
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