Recently, the research team led by Professor Haifeng Yu from College of Engineering of Peking University has made an important progress in the photoresponsive shape-memory-polymer/grapheme oxide nanocomposite materials. The results titled “Light-Powered Tumbler Movement of Graphene Oxide/Polymer Nanocomposites” have been published in the famous journal ACS Applied Materials and  Interfaces 2015 7, 3834-3839,  http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/am508970k

Photoresponsive, lamina and flexible graphene oxide/polymer nanocomposite films were fabricated by simple solution casting method. Fast, stable and reversible photomechanical behavior of the nanocomposite films upon irradiation with visible light was observed based on the photothermal effect of graphene oxide and the shape memory effect of the polymer matrix. According to the principle of equilibrium apparatus, light-powered tumbler movement was achieved in these films by imitating the structure of one wobbly man. Although photo-driven contraction, expansion, bending, twisting, oscillation, and cilia movement have been realized in photomechanical materials, novel forms of complicated motion are still bottleneck problem limiting their practical applications. This work would have significant impact on photomechanical materials in device applications for advanced functions.