Untethered actuation is important for robotic devices to achieve autonomous motion, which is typically enabled by using batteries. Using enzymes to provide the required electrical charge is particularly interesting as it will enable direct harvesting of fuel components from a surrounding fluid. Here, a soft artificial muscle is presented, which uses the biofuel glucose in the presence of oxygen. Glucose oxidase and laccase enzymes integrated in the actuator catalytically convert glucose and oxygen into electrical power that in turn is converted into movement by the electroactive polymer polypyrrole causing the actuator to bend. The integrated bioelectrode pair shows a maximum open‐circuit voltage of 0.70 ± 0.04 V at room temperature and a maximum power density of 0.27 µW cm−2 at 0.50 V, sufficient to drive an external polypyrrole‐based trilayer artificial muscle. Next, the enzymes are fully integrated into the artificial muscle, resulting in an autonomously powered actuator that can bend reversibly in both directions driven by glucose and O2 only. This autonomously powered artificial muscle can be of great interest for soft (micro‐)robotics and implantable or ingestible medical devices manoeuvring throughout the body, for devices in regenerative medicine, wearables, and environmental monitoring devices operating autonomously in aqueous environments.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.