What is it about?

The idea was to use fiber based material and then we added the conducting polymer on it, to make an actuator. So far it had better performance than we expected and it came near to natural muscle requirements. The application for such design was aimed for soft robotics.

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Why is it important?

In general having an artificial muscle the linear actuation is that what is needed rather bending. At first, material here nanofiber scaffolds are needed to have certain elastic fibers that can be stretched as well the conductive coatings. The deposition of conducting polymers on CFS called PPy/DBS (CFS-PPy/DBS) was chosen to control actuation direction and to achieve high strain which was up to 20%. The concept is to select all parameter in control actuation direction, flexibility and high strain that can meet the criteria having an artificial muscle.

Perspectives

A simple design rather complicated arrangements of fiber materials was the goal of this research. One possible perspective are alignments of nanofiber scaffolds to increase actuation speed which was still not on scale of natural muscle to meet the requirements of an adaptable "artificial muscle".

Rudolf Kiefer
Ton Duc Thang University

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This page is a summary of: Concept of an artificial muscle design on polypyrrole nanofiber scaffolds, PLoS ONE, May 2020, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232851.
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