A blister-like soft nano-textured thermo-pneumatic actuator as an artificial muscle

Abstract

Here, model blister-like soft thermo-pneumatic artificial muscles with the embedded nanofibers impregnated with ethanol are developed. The muscles are essentially blister-like thermo-pneumatic soft actuators (BTSAs), which deflect in response to heat supplied to their bottom. The resulting deflections are on the scale of 1 cm, and the BTSAs are operational for several cycles. They are able to raise the artificial rigid scales, spines or fur/thin fibers attached to them emulating animals such as pangolin, hedgehog and porcupine. They are also capable of removing the stickiest adhesive tapes attached to them, and thus hold great promise for biomedical applications where artificially grown skin patches should be removed from an underlying substrate without being damaged. The theory of the BTSA proposed in this work is in reasonable agreement with the acquired experimental data.

Supersonic Cold Spraying for Energy and Environmental Applications: One‐Step Scalable Coating Technology for Advanced Micro‐ and Nanotextured Materials

“…Polymer fibers, including those composed of both natural and synthetic materials, are essential for many modern technologies, from everyday clothes to various state-of-the-art smart materials. [130][131][132][133][134][135] Accordingly, numerous fiber-forming methods, such as electrospinning, solution blowing, meltblowing, wet spinning, and force spinning, have been actively studied and widely employed in both academia and industry to fabricate various macro-, micro-and nanoscopic polymer fibers. [131] In 2013, the feasibility of supersonic spraying (or blowing) systems for fabricating ultrathin polymer nanofibers was demonstrated (Figure 14, Tables 1 and 6).…”

Soft Actuators Based on Liquid–Vapor Phase Change Composites

“…7 Cylindrical microrobots fabricated by photoactive liquid-crystal elastomers have the biomimetic motion under the actuation of structured monochromatic light. 10 Compared with other smart soft materials, thermospneumatic actuation using liquid-vapor phase change in phase change materials (PCMs) has the advantages of simple fabrication, easy operation, lightweight, durability, large deformation, and high loading force [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] and has been utilized in various fields, such as valves in microfluidics, 13 triggers for standing scales, 14 and soft robots with loco-motion and grabbing functions. 15,20 The volume change of capsuled liquid from liquid to vapor in chambers has been studied through the saturated vapor pressure, 14,16 revealing the capacity of large deformation.…”

Thermopneumatic Soft Micro Bellows Actuator for Standalone Operation

“…However, to produce a noticeable deformation, a high voltage of several kV is required, for which a bulky power supply is required [ 18 ]. Thermopneumatic soft actuators are being developed that increase pressure by heating the internal air or fluid with built-in heaters, thereby switching to mechanical strokes [ 19 ]. Here, the thermopneumatic actuators can be configured by heaters and power supplies so that they offer favorable alternatives for miniaturization and standalone operation to relieve the payload without the need for additional devices for driving.…”