Abstract
The amoeba can flow like liquid to change its morphology to effectively capture and excrete various prey. Inspired by the amoeba, we present a liquid metal universal gripper capable of effective grasping and active releasing of targets with various shapes, sizes, and stiffnesses in liquid and air. We unveil a surface tension induced active release mechanism enabling tunable active release of micro-objects. The gripper operates across 14 orders of magnitude in weight (from 10−12 g to 200 g) and achieves a low gripping contact pressure of ~10 Pa for handling delicate items. It can capture and release moving objects within milliseconds without precise alignment. An environment-agnostic surface activity design extends its functionality to a non-electrolyte environment. The gripper offers notable performance metrics over existing robotic grippers in multiscale operation, low contact pressure, and tunable releasing speed, representing a notable solution for living organisms and microscale objects.
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Data supporting the findings of this study and its supplementary information files are available from the corresponding authors upon request.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Distinguished Young Scientist Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant No. BK20231522), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant No. 92248302), the Natural Science Foundation for Colleges and Universities of Jiangsu Province (grant No. 22KJA510006), and Suzhou Science and Technology Plan Project (grant No. SGC202320). S.-Y. Tang gratefully acknowledges the research funded by the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT230100257).
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X.L. conceived the idea. X.L., L.C., S.-Y.T., and S.Z. supervised the study. X.C., M.Z., D.F., M.S., L.W., and H.L. performed fabrication, testing, and characterizations. S.T. and M.Z. performed the simulation. X.C., M.Z., M.S., Y.D., and Y.C. processed the figures and videos. X.L., X.C., and M.Z. wrote the manuscript. L.S., B.H., B.X., W.L., and S.-Y.T. revised the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Chen, X., Zhang, M., Cao, L. et al. Liquid metal universal grippers for gentle, adaptable, multiscale manipulation. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70313-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70313-6
