Electrified Hydrogels for High-Performance Electroosmotic Soft Actuators
발표자
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초록
내용
Enormous research efforts have been devoted to developing electroactive soft actuators to emulate various compliant motions of biological organisms, potentially replacing electric motors. However, attempts at integration of electroactive soft actuators with electronic components have encountered significant trade-offs between weight/size of robots and portability due to limited actuation performances and strict operation conditions. In this talk, I present a new class of hydrogel-layered electroosmosis actuator that is operable at low voltage/power (< 3 V, 20 mW cm-2) with unprecedentedly high performance as a new approach overcoming aforementioned challenges. This is enabled by capillary-assisted in situ assembly of metal nanoparticles on hydrogel surfaces to form porous and ultrathin metallic layers. With the integration of the electroosmotic hydrogel actuators with microcontroller and small battery, the smallest and fastest untethered soft aquabots are demonstrated.