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2026

3D-Printed Low-Voltage-Driven Ciliary Hydrogel Microactuators

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A team led by Metin Sitti and Wenqi Hu at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has demonstrated a previously unreported rapid electroresponsive behavior in micrometer-scale hydrogels, which can be triggered at voltages as low as 1.5 V and does not require hydrolysis. This bending motion is driven by ion migration within a nanoscale hydrogel network that is fabricated via two-photon polymerization-based 3D printing and can be completed in milliseconds. Building on these findings, the authors printed an array of gel microcilia made from a soft acrylate–acrylamide copolymer (AAc-co-AAm) hydrogel with a modulus of approximately 1000 Pa, which responds to electrical stimulation within milliseconds. Each microcilium has a diameter of 2–10 µm and a height of 18–90 µm, enabling three-dimensional rotational bending motions at frequencies up to 40 Hz while mimicking the geometry and dynamic properties of natural cilia. These gel microcilia retain their functionality after 330,000 consecutive actuation cycles, with performance degradation of less than 30%. The gel microcilium array can be integrated onto a flexible polyimide substrate and manufactured at scale using conventional photolithography. Moreover, it can be individually and dynamically controlled via a microelectrode array, enabling fluid manipulation and particle transport at the micrometer scale.

The research findings were published in Nature on January 14, 2026, under the title “3D-printed low-voltage-driven ciliary hydrogel microactuators.”