Bending Monolayer Artificial Muscle

Abstract

A bending electro‐chemo‐mechanical monolayer artificial muscle is presented and characterized. A transversal cross‐linking gradient attained during the film electropolymerization is proposed as the origin of the reaction‐driven muscular action. Each unit of charge consumed per unit of polymer weight gives the largest angular displacement described in the literature. This oversimplified polymeric motor for engineering applications saves extra energy required to bend and trail inactive layers from bilayer or multilayer classical structures.

Temporary Actuation of Bilayer Polymer Hydrogels Mediated by the Enzymatic Reaction

“…Smart actuators constructed by stimuli-responsive polymers have deformational behaviors such as expansion and bending under specific stimuli such as light, 1−4 heat, 5−8 electricity, 9−11 and pH change. 12−14 They have wide application prospects in the fields of shape memory materials, 15,16 soft robotics, 4,17 artificial muscles, 11,18 microfluidics, 19,20 and drug delivery 7,14,21 and have attracted significant attentions. In the case of polymer hydrogels, it is the different swelling ratios of stimuliresponsive hydrogels under different circumstances that causes the deformational behaviors of the hydrogel actuators.…”

“…Smart actuators constructed by stimuli-responsive polymers have deformational behaviors such as expansion and bending under specific stimuli such as light, − heat, − electricity, − and pH change. − They have wide application prospects in the fields of shape memory materials, , soft robotics, , artificial muscles, , microfluidics, , and drug delivery ,, and have attracted significant attentions. In the case of polymer hydrogels, it is the different swelling ratios of stimuli-responsive hydrogels under different circumstances that causes the deformational behaviors of the hydrogel actuators. ,, The most common way to achieve the bending of actuators is to construct an anisotropic structure, such as the bilayer structure. ,, For a bilayer hydrogel actuator, the shape change of the entire structure is usually caused by the different expanding/shrinking trends of each layer of the hydrogels under a certain stimulus. ,− Based on this principle, the hydrogel actuators normally exhibit a monotonic responsiveness, that is, there is only one response action after being stimulated once.…”

Modeling oxidised polypyrrole in the condensed phase with a novel force field

“…The fitted parameters are Py-Py = 0.136 eV and σ Py-Py = 5.5 Å. The U dipole-dipole term in equation (11) describing the interaction between dipole moments of monomers in different chains has the same analytical expression as equation ( 8), with summations covering up to N Py monomers and N dopant dopants. Figure 4(a) illustrates the radial dependence of the full monomer-monomer interaction, equation ( 11), indicating a repulsive barrier between 8-12 Å that favours oligomer pairs of different 12-Py oligomers to be fairly well localized unless energy is provided to overcome such barrier.…”

“…Meanwhile, PPy applications in medicine have increased significantly in the last years. For example, the use of PPy for artificial muscles has notorious advantages over motor actuators [9][10][11][12][13]. The ability of oxidised PPy by anionic dopants for nerve growth and survival has shown critical for ensuring optimal delivery of neurotrophins in inner-ear therapies [14].…”

Strategies for Developing Shape-Shifting Behaviours and Potential Applications of Poly (N-vinyl Caprolactam) Hydrogels

“…Notably, the strategy of using a single-layer structure has also been proposed [ 15 , 16 ]. Instead of incorporating multiple different materials into a multilayer structure, a gradient in the material properties of a single-layer structure can be used to produce a stress gradient along the thickness of the material [ 1 , 11 , 12 ].…”