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The Leidenfrost effect occurs when an object near a hot surface vaporizesrapidly enough to lift itself up and hover. Although well-understood forliquids and stiff sublimable solids, nothing is known about the effect withmaterials whose stiffness lies between these extremes. Here we introduce a newphenomenon that occurs with vaporizable soft solids: the elastic Leidenfrosteffect. By dropping hydrogel spheres onto hot surfaces we find that, ratherthan hovering, they energetically bounce several times their diameter forminutes at a time. With high-speed video during a single impact, we uncoverhigh-frequency microscopic gap dynamics at the sphere-substrate interface. Weshow how these otherwise-hidden agitations constitute work cycles that harvestmechanical energy from the vapour and sustain the bouncing. Our findingsunleash a powerful and widely applicable strategy for injecting mechanicalenergy into soft materials, with relevance to fields ranging from soft roboticsand metamaterials to microfluidics and active matter.

Coupling the Leidenfrost Effect and Elastic Deformations to Power Sustained Bouncing