Effect of Temperature on Electrical Resistance-Length Characteristic of Electroactive Supercoiled Polymer Artificial Muscle

Abstract

It is found that the electrical resistance-length characteristic in an electroactive supercoiled polymer artificial muscle strongly depends on the temperature. This may come from the thermal expansion of coils in the artificial muscle, which increases the contact area of neighboring coils and results in a lower electrical resistance at a higher temperature. On the other hand, the electrical resistance-length characteristic collected during electrical driving seriously deviates from those collected at constant temperatures. Inhomogeneous heating during electrical driving seems to be a key for the deviation.

Advances in artificial muscles: A brief literature and patent review

“…Artificial muscle is a generic term for a class of materials and devices that can reversibly contract, expand, or rotate within one component due to an external stimulus ( Mirvakili and Hunter, 2018 ). Due to external stimuli (voltage ( Frank et al, 2022 ), current ( Hao et al, 2019 ), temperature ( Tada and Yoshida, 2021 ), pressure ( Nuchkrua and Leephakpreeda, 2022 ), light ( Li et al, 2020a ; Yu et al, 2022 ), humidity ( Zhou et al, 2018 ), etc. ), artificial muscles can be deformed by changes in their own structure to produce the three basic actions of reversible expansion ( Wang et al, 2021a ), rotation ( Wang H Q et al, 2020 ), and retraction ( Oh et al, 2022 ).…”