#soft materials

AI Meets Soft Materials to Advance Skin-Like Wearable Electronics

From smart textiles to robotic skins, this review shows how soft electronics and AI are reshaping wearable technology while revealing the durability, power, and validation challenges still holding the field back.

In a recent review published in the journal Nano-Micro Letters, researchers examined the rapid progress of intelligent soft wearable systems enabled by advances in flexible materials, soft electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). The authors emphasize how stretchable functional materials, energy-efficient device architectures, and AI-driven data analysis are driving progress toward more capable wearable technologies. Overall, the review presents an integrated perspective on the design of next-generation wearable platforms. It outlines key opportunities and challenges for their application in personalized healthcare, human-machine interaction, soft robotics, and digital medicine.

Dual-mode magnetic elastomer moves on command, vanishes on demand

The rapid expansion of soft robots and smart electronic devices is driving demand for materials that can not only move and adapt, but also complete their missions without leaving behind unwanted traces. As these technologies are increasingly explored for health care, environmental monitoring, infrastructure inspection, and security applications, robots and devices are expected to operate in places where human access is limited—such as narrow pipes, sealed spaces, underground facilities, and hazardous environments. However, once deployed, these systems can be difficult or impossible to retrieve. If left behind, they may cause contamination, equipment damage, or information leakage. Existing systems also often require separate stimuli or control units for actuation and degradation, making them complex and difficult to operate in opaque or confined environments.

Light-responsive hydrogels enable fast and precise control of soft materials

Researchers at Tampere University have recently demonstrated that light can be used to precisely reshape soft materials without mechanical contact. They have developed light-responsive hydrogel thin films that enable programmable surfaces with high sensitivity, rapid response, precise spatial control and reversibility. The technology opens new possibilities for tunable devices in photonics, sensing and biomedicine. Until now, responses in hydrogel films have typically been limited to timescales of tens of seconds and spatial resolutions of tens of micrometers—about the thickness of a fine human hair—restricting practical applications. In contrast, the university's Smart Photonic Materials research group has achieved control on sub-second timescales and sub-micron resolution, marking a significant advance in speed and precision. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

From ship wakes to soft tissues: Exploring fluid and solid surface-wave physics

A new study by scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) shows that when a pressure disturbance moves across an ultrasoft elastic material, such as a gel or a biological tissue, it generates a V-shaped wake that's strikingly similar to the waves that travel behind a boat. Unifying waves in soft materials Published in Physical Review Letters, the study offers a unified perspective, combining experiments and theory, on surface motion that spans fluids, solids, and the soft materials that lie between. It opens the door to new approaches to imaging and understanding the behavior of both natural and engineered soft materials.

From light to logic: First complete logic gate achieved in soft material using light alone

Researchers from McMaster University and the University of Pittsburgh have created the first functionally complete logic gate—a NAND gate (short for "NOT AND")—in a soft material using only beams of visible light. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, marks a significant advance in the field of materials that compute, in which materials themselves process information without traditional electronic circuitry. "This project has been part of my scientific journey for over a decade," said first author Fariha Mahmood, who began studying the gels as an undergraduate researcher at McMaster and is now pursuing postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge. "To see these materials not only respond to light but also perform a logic operation feels like watching the material 'think.' It opens the door to soft systems making decisions on their own."

Chemical networks can mimic nervous systems to power movement in soft materials

What if a soft material could move on its own, guided not by electronics or motors, but by the kind of rudimentary chemical signaling that powers the simplest organisms? Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering have modeled just that—a synthetic system that on its own directly transforms chemical reactions into mechanical motion, without the need for the complex biochemical machinery present in our bodies. Just like jellyfish, some of the simplest organisms do not have a centralized brain or nervous system. Instead, they have a "nerve net" which consists of dispersed nerve cells that are interconnected by active junctions, which emit and receive chemical signals. Even without a central "processor," the chemical signals spontaneously travel through the net and trigger the autonomous motion needed for organisms' survival.

Tiny explosions and soft materials make onscreen braille more robust

From texting on a smart phone to ordering train tickets at a kiosk, touch screens are ubiquitous and, in most cases, relatively reliable. But for people who are blind or visually impaired and use electronic braille devices, the technology can be vulnerable to the elements, easily broken or clogged by dirt, and difficult to repair. By combining the design principles and materials of soft robotics with microscale combustions, Cornell researchers have now created a high-resolution electronic tactile display that is more robust than other haptic braille systems and can operate in messy, unpredictable environments. The technology also has potential applications in teleoperation, automation and could bring more tactile experiences to virtual reality. The research is published in Science Robotics. The paper's co-first authors are Ronald Heisser, Ph.D. '23 and postdoctoral researcher Khoi Ly.