Polyvinyl chloride gel (PVCg) exhibits versatile electromechanical properties, making it highly promising for soft robots. However, conventional PVCg with excessive plasticizers generates a significant amount of heat and suffers from premature electrical breakdown during electro-induced actuation, seriously limiting its widespread application. Here, a novel strategy is demonstrated to simultaneously regulate the heat generation and improve the electromechanical properties of PVCg by introducing polyvinyl chloride-co-vinyl acetate (PVCVA) to fabricate PVCVA gel (PVCVAg). Notably, the proposed PVCVAg exhibits over 50% reduction in heat generation, 15-fold extended lifespan (from 200 s to over 3000 s), and 2.15 times higher electro-adhesion force (from 13.8 to 29.6 kPa) compared to the state-of-the-art PVCg. Based on the improved electroactive properties of PVCVAg, electro-actuation, adhesion, and tunable heating are integrated into a soft robot to achieve fast crawling, module self-reconfiguration within millimeter dimensions via electroadhesive connections, and on-demand environmental thermal interaction without requiring auxiliary heaters. Moreover, these capabilities are validated through various tests, including self-reconfiguration in maze-like confined spaces, operation at -50 °C, and collaborative aero-engine blisk inspection and ice melting in freezing environments. These demonstrations highlight the application potential of the integrated multifunctional PVCVAg devices in complex and extreme environments.
Wei et al. (Mon,) studied this question.