Soft grippers that incorporate functional materials are important in the development of mechanically compliant and multifunctional interfaces for both sensing and stimulating soft objects and organisms. In particular, the capability for firm and delicate grasping of soft cells and organs without mechanical damage is essential to identify the condition of and monitor meaningful biosignals from objects. Here, we report a millimeter-scale soft gripper based on a shape memory polymer that enables manipulating a heavy object (payload-to-weight ratio up to 6400) and grasping organisms at the micro/milliscale. The silver nanowires and crack-based strain sensor embedded in this soft gripper enable simultaneous measurement of the temperature and pressure on grasped objects and offer temperature and mechanical stimuli for the grasped object. We validate our miniaturized soft gripper by demonstrating that it can grasp a snail egg while simultaneously applying a moderate temperature stimulation to induce hatching process and monitor the heart rate of a newborn snail. The results present the potential for widespread utility of soft grippers in the area of biomedical engineering, especially in the development of conditional or closed-loop interfacing with microscale biotissues and organisms.

中文翻译：

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具有多功能软夹持器的微型器官的生命信号传感和操纵

包含功能材料的软抓手对于开发用于传感和刺激软物体和生物的机械兼容和多功能界面非常重要。特别是，在没有机械损伤的情况下牢固而细腻地抓住软细胞和器官的能力对于识别物体的状况和监测来自物体的有意义的生物信号至关重要。在这里，我们报告了一种基于形状记忆聚合物的毫米级软抓手，该抓手能够操纵重物（有效载荷重量比高达 6400）并在微/毫秒级抓取生物体。嵌入在这种软夹具中的银纳米线和基于裂纹的应变传感器能够同时测量被抓物体的温度和压力，并为被抓物体提供温度和机械刺激。我们通过证明它可以抓住蜗牛卵，同时应用适度的温度刺激来诱导孵化过程并监测新生蜗牛的心率来验证我们的小型软抓手。结果表明，软夹具在生物医学工程领域具有广泛应用的潜力，特别是在开发与微型生物组织和生物体的条件或闭环接口方面。