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Geometrically Enabled Soft Electroactuators via Laser Cutting

Publish Time: Jan. 07, 2020

【Description】:

Soft electric materials have broad application prospects in the miniaturization, anthropomorphization, and implantability of robots due to their extremely high zero-activity and biocompatibility. Traditional electric drives mostly rely on mechanical components such as mechanical motors, bearings, and belt chains. Although they have higher power and frequency of movement, they are significantly different from natural skeletal muscle in size, dexterity, and movement consistency. For this reason, soft electric materials represented by conductive polymers, dielectric elastomers and electrothermal polymers are gradually becoming the preferred solution for "artificial muscles". However, soft electric materials have so far been extremely difficult to form and assemble. Due to the material's high chemical stability, molding methods such as etching or 3D printing are only suitable for certain soluble soft materials, and still require manual implantation of metal electrodes or connection components after molding. Such manual and semi-manual assembly methods not only reduce processing accuracy and repeatability, but also often cause component peeling or fracture due to structural errors, which greatly accelerates the overall failure of the electric system.

In order to realize the automatic batch molding of soft electric materials, Guo Liang's group of the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering of The Ohio State University and Hu Nan's group of the Department of Civil and Environmental Measurement of the same school used polypyrrole composite film as the research Models and jointly developed a method for rapid prototyping of soft electric materials using laser cutting. This method utilizes a high-energy infrared laser beam, which can guarantee an automatic processing accuracy of 1-2 microns at a notch width as low as 30 microns. For the first time, the joint team systematically studied the effects of different geometrical features (transverse / longitudinal, radial / tangential, spiral, etc.) on material stress transmission and macroscopic deformation, and proved various driving modes (extrusion, grasping, flapping, lifting) Or rotation, etc.) can be achieved only by a scientific combination of patterns. The outstanding contribution of this research is to reveal the mapping relationship between "pattern-deformation", which provides a theoretical basis and experimental support for promoting the transition of structural design from "manual assembly testing" to "computer fast finite element simulation". It is emphasized that these geometries with specific functions are not only suitable for electrochemical polymer films, but can also be quickly transplanted into all flexible substrates with "excited bending" characteristics (electrothermal, piezoelectric, photodynamic, and magnetic dynamic films). Etc.) and in principle are not limited by materials and processing methods. This discovery points to an exciting general strategy for enhancing, expanding, and applying the capabilities of software robots.

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A laser is used as a blade to precisely cut a selected pattern on a gold-plated flexible substrate for rapid electrochemical deposition of electromotive materials. Researchers systematically compared the effects of transverse, longitudinal, radial, and spiral cutting on deformation, and then combined various geometric elements to guide and enhance the desired deformation effect. Experiments also show that "cutting first and then depositing" can better guarantee the machining accuracy and material life than "depositing first and then cutting". This paper first clarified the structural design criteria and optimal processing flow of soft electric thin films in laser cutting, and then used it as the main cover. It was published in Advanced Engineering Materials (DOI: 10.1002 / adem.201900664).

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