Chinese scholars' new breakthroughs in "artificial muscle" research have potential for application in many fields

　　China News Service, Harbin, February 1st (Reporter Yifu Shi) Harbin Institute of Technology announced on the 1st that the school has cooperated with many universities in many countries to achieve new breakthroughs in the research field of "artificial muscles" and solve the capacitance dependence of artificial muscle drive performance. Sexual issues provide a new theoretical basis for the subsequent design of high-performance drivers with non-toxic and low drive voltages.

　　Smart materials are new materials that can actively respond to external stimuli. They have multiple functions such as self-driving, self-monitoring, and self-repair. They have broad application prospects in artificial intelligence, smart manufacturing, biomedicine, robotics and other fields. .

　　The artificial muscle of polymer fiber and carbon nanotube yarn is a typical smart material, which is mainly driven by thermal and electrochemical methods.

Screenshot of the article.

Provided by Harbin Institute of Technology

　　Professor Leng Jinsong from Harbin Institute of Technology, in collaboration with the University of Texas at Dallas, Jiangsu University, Hanyang University in South Korea, and the University of Wollongong in Australia, has discovered for the first time that the strategy of functionalization of polyelectrolytes can achieve the "double" of artificial muscle smart materials. The “polar” drive is transformed into a “unipolar” drive. At the same time, an abnormal phenomenon in which the driving performance of artificial muscles decreases with the decrease of capacitance is found.

　　The research results are titled "Unipolar-Stroke, Electroosmotic-PumpCarbonNanotube Yarn Muscles" (Unipolar-Stroke, Electroosmotic-Pump Carbon Nanotube Yarn Muscles) and published online in the famous academic journal "Science".

　　Compared with traditional artificial muscles, this artificial muscle has the characteristics of non-toxicity, high driving frequency, low driving voltage, high specific energy, high driving strain, and high energy density. It can expand the structure in space, bionic flapping aircraft, deformable aircraft, Underwater robots, flexible robots, wearable exoskeletons, medical robots and other fields have huge application potential.

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