Fig. 4: Magnetic actuation.
a SHINE fibre maintained its luminance after bending for 2000 cycles at a bending radius of 8 mm (κ = 125 m−1). The insets reveal that the fibre maintained its compact coaxial structure before and after bending; no interface failure was observed (white dashed areas). L and L0 refer to the luminance at a bending cycle and the initial luminance without bending, respectively. Scale bar, 60 μm. b A SHINE fibre with a length of ~65 cm actuated by an external magnetic field (B) to perform curling, with potential applications as light-emitting ferromagnetic soft robotic fibres. The direction of B is labeled at the bottom left in blue color. The working distance of the magnet was 5 mm. Scale bar, 10 cm. c Illustration of a millimeter-scale 3D pipe of two inner diameters (d1 = 5.2 mm; d2 = 4.2 mm) and three bend shapes (L shape, κ = 107.0 m−1; U shape, κ = 63.7 m−1; V shape, κ = 228.1 m−1). A SHINE fibre (~35 cm long) navigated this 3D pipe successfully. d Self-healing of SHINE fibre during navigation in a U-bend pipe (inner diameter = 5.2 mm, κ = 63.7 m−1). The fibre restored its pristine electro-luminescence and actuation capabilities via self-healing after being severed. The dashed white boxes highlight the cut location. All arrows indicate the directions of motion. Scale bars in (c and d) 10 mm.
