Facile Manufacturing Route for Magneto‐Responsive Soft Actuators

Abstract

Soft actuators have opened compelling new opportunities in the fields of manufacturing, robotics, and medicine. [1] Because of their conformal and mechanically compliant nature, actuators made of soft materials allow for safe interactions of robots with humans and provide an attractive platform to interface flexible electronics with human skin and tissues. [2][3][4][5] Potential applications that can benefit from these features include robots for manipulation of delicate objects, [6] exoskeletons for motion rehabilitation, medical prostheses, [7] surgical aid devices, [8,9] and intelligent reconfigurable matter in general. [10] In many of these applications, it is desirable to minimize the energy required for actuation, enhance actuation speed, and enable untethered autonomous motion.Among the several possible types of devices and actuation modes, [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] magnetically responsive actuators are particularly interesting, because they are fast, contactless, and are driven by magnetic fields that can be safely used in humans. [21] Contactless control allows for the manipulation of untethered devices in confined spaces, which is crucial for minimally invasive medical devices. [22] Making soft objects magneto-responsive is also a promising approach in the ongoing efforts to create devices with complex output motion driven by a simple single input. [23] For example, recent research has shown that the soft objects with tunable local magnetization patterns can undergo complex motions, such as crawling, rolling, and jumping when activated with an external magnetic field. These magneto-responsive soft materials have so far been produced in simple planar geometries using NdFeB microparticles that are pre-magnetized using magnetic fields higher than 1 T. [19,24,25] Although the magnetization of NdFeB particles using these approaches prevents de-magnetization of the actuator, the

Soft Magneto‐Responsive Shape Memory Foam Composite Actuators

“…Greater magnetization was attained by samples magnetized during curing as the result of the particles aligning with their easy axis along the applied field. [ 23 ]…”

“…[ 22 ] Carpenter et al. [ 23 ] developed a silicone‐based composite actuator containing SrFe 12 O 19 magnetic particles. A range of functional soft actuators that can be remotely controlled by an external magnetic field is created using their particle‐filled silicone resins.…”

A unified numerical approach for soft to hard magneto-viscoelastically coupled polymers

“…Soft robotic grippers based on MAPs are becoming popular due to the ease of their actuation [95][96][97]. In this example, we consider a hard magnetic gripper consisting of six fingers, as shown in Fig.…”

Amphibious Transport of Fluids and Solids by Soft Magnetic Carpets

“…[6] In robotics, the transport of solid (and fragile) objects has been achieved using soft actuators. [7][8][9][10] Recent demonstrations thereof include pneumatic designs. [11,12] However, often these soft actuators have to be driven by complicated algorithms [12,13] to achieve simple rotational or bending motions.…”