Latches and Bottlebrush Poroelasticity for Amplified Movement in Soft Matter

The conversion of elastic to kinetic energy is widely used in nature to generate impressive performance, especially the generation of power-dense movement. A general framework, called Latch Mediated Spring Actuation (LaMSA), has been recently introduced to understand how geometry and materials properties work together to produce these behaviors. Here, we describe our efforts to adopt this framework in the design of soft materials systems that enable not only power-dense movements, but more broadly, spatiotemporal control of energy storage and release across a wide spectrum of scales. We highlight the design of materials that provide multiple intrinsic latches for controlling the conversion of chemical to elastic to kinetic energy. We also highlight new measurements of how molecular architecture can impact the poroelasticity of a polymer network. In particular, we demonstrate how the characteristic poroelastic timescale can be different for polymer networks composed of either linear or bottlebrush polymer chains. These findings open pathways for molecular to macroscale control of soft matter systems for applications ranging from robotics to advanced manufacturing.