This Heat-Sensitive Graphene Paper Can Walk and Fold Itself Up Like Origami

Researchers from Donghua University in China have constructed a self-folding sheet of graphene-based paper. You know what that means? Self-folding origami.

As the video above shows, the material folds itself up when hit with an infrared heat, and unfolds when the heat's turned off. It can also react to gentler light and heat. The carbon-based material, called graphene oxide, can walk, turn, and fold itself into a predesigned shape, and the researchers hope this could be expanded for use as a material for artificial muscles, robotics, and replace other slow-responding polymers materials in machines.

But in the form you see in front of you, you can probably see it being used as little more than a party trick. What about self-packing boxes? Someone page Amazon!

You can view the rest of the researchers' findings in their paper, published today in Science Advances.