Soft actuators using liquid crystal elastomers with encapsulated liquid metal joule heaters

Kent, Teresa A.; Ford, Michael J.; Markvicka, Eric J.

doi:10.1088/2399-7532/ab835c

Cited by 62 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…This process is compatible with a variety of substrates, as seen in prior work [ 52 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 59 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ]. While others have shown that patterning is possible using a directed laser to ablate liquid metal from the surface [ 53 ], here we make use of vinyl stencils (also commonly used in the crafting community) adhered to the substrate to pattern the metal. We use a craft cutter (Cameo) that can rapidly fabricate complex openings in a vinyl sheet for stenciling (a technique called xurography [ 67 ]).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since not all the metal passes through the stencil, there is some waste, yet most of the metal blocked by the stencil can be recovered. This technique has been used successfully to fabricate soft electrodes [ 51 , 52 , 53 ], sensors [ 54 , 55 ], energy harvesters [ 56 , 57 , 58 ] and antennas [ 59 ] Motivated by these applications, this study examines how it forms robust electrical contacts, especially in comparison to inkjet processing. We also use the spray coating process to pattern thin encapsulating layers of silicone, which are important to ensure the liquid metal does not smear during handling after deposition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aerosol Spray Deposition of Liquid Metal and Elastomer Coatings for Rapid Processing of Stretchable Electronics

et al. 2021

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We report a spray deposition technique for patterning liquid metal alloys to form stretchable conductors, which can then be encapsulated in silicone elastomers via the same spraying procedure. While spraying has been used previously to deposit many materials, including liquid metals, this work focuses on quantifying the spraying process and combining it with silicones. Spraying generates liquid metal microparticles (~5 μm diameter) that pass through openings in a stencil to produce traces with high resolution (~300 µm resolution using stencils from a craft cutter) on a substrate. The spraying produces sufficient kinetic energy (~14 m/s) to distort the particles on impact, which allows them to merge together. This merging process depends on both particle size and velocity. Particles of similar size do not merge when cast as a film. Likewise, smaller particles (<1 µm) moving at the same speed do not rupture on impact either, though calculations suggest that such particles could rupture at higher velocities. The liquid metal features can be encased by spraying uncured silicone elastomer from a volatile solvent to form a conformal coating that does not disrupt the liquid metal features during spraying. Alternating layers of liquid metal and elastomer may be patterned sequentially to build multilayer devices, such as soft and stretchable sensors.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerosol Spray Deposition of Liquid Metal and Elastomer Coatings for Rapid Processing of Stretchable Electronics

et al. 2021

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“…They showed that alongside their actuation capabilities, these channels could also be used as sensors enabling closed-loop control. [287]…”

Section: Joule Heatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

et al. 2020

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This review covers recent advancements in the field of bioinspired soft robotics, with a primary focus on the last 4 years (2017)(2018)(2019)(2020). The review serves as a toolbox for an interdisciplinary audience interested in the most recent bioinspired soft robotic technologies. In particular, it highlights and explores the vital components of soft robots, focusing on the enabling mechanisms and their biological inspirations. The first section discusses the materials used to fabricate soft bio inspired robots. Soft bioinspired actuation and sensing are then discussed, exploring their capabilities and implementation by researchers. Existing challenges and future potentials of bioinspired soft robots are addressed in the concluding remarks. This review provides engineers and scientists with the latest technological advancements and information needed for designing and developing the next generation of soft bioinspired robotic systems. The future applications of these robots will be grand and limitless. Materials Used for Bioinspired Sensors and ActuatorsClassical robotic systems are comprised of rigid bodies, actuators, and sensors. Unfortunately, many of these well-developed actuators and sensors are not transferable to soft bodies. Thus, researchers working in soft robotics need to reinvent actuators and sensors for soft moving bodies. Biological organisms can be an excellent inspiration for designing these soft actuators and sensors, allowing for their integration in both soft and rigid bodies. The design process of soft actuators and sensors have to be initiated with material selection and composition, for they are foundations upon which the actuators and sensors will be built around. Presently, a diversified list of materials has been used in the development of soft robotic systems. This section will cover some of the latest advancements in the last 4 years in the area of material selection and composition for the design and development of soft bioinspired actuators and sensors.During the past 4 years, researchers have produced soft bioinspired actuators and sensors using biological material such as muscle tissue, [23,24] and plant fibers; [25] carbon-based materials such as graphite and graphene oxide (GO) [26][27][28][29][30][31] and carbon nanotubes (CN); [32,33] hydrogel materials such as poly(Nisopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM), [34,35] liquid crystal elastomers (LCE), [36] dielectric elastomers (DE), [37] and ionic polymermetal composites (IPMC). [38] An overview of these materials (Figure 1), along with their underlying mechanisms, are discussed below.Biological systems can perform complex tasks with high compliance levels. This makes them a great source of inspiration for soft robotics. Indeed, the union of these fields has brought about bioinspired soft robotics, with hundreds of publications on novel research each year. This review aims to survey fundamental advances in bioinspired soft actuators and sensors with a focus on the progress between 2017 and 2020, providing a primer for the materials used i...

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“…The technology to build the components for such a compliant multilayer system is partially available today. Currently, self-healing foils (Hönes et al, 2017 ), flexible sensors, and electronic circuits (Lu and Kim, 2014 ; Majidi, 2018 ; Kumar et al, 2019 ), solar batteries (Zhong et al, 2017 ), and, as shown above, smart actuators can be produced using, for example, multiphoton lithography (Malinauskas et al, 2009 ; Vaezi et al, 2013 ; Meza et al, 2014 , 2015 ), wafer technology (Kim et al, 2012 ; Segev-Bar and Haick, 2013 ), spray coating (Kent et al, 2020 ), and 3D and 4D printing (Kumar et al, 2019 ; Ma et al, 2019 ). Nevertheless, one challenge that remains open is the combination of all these components into one multi-materials system.…”

Section: Envisioning a True Avft As An Inspiration For Living Adaptivmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial Venus Flytraps: A Research Review and Outlook on Their Importance for Novel Bioinspired Materials Systems

2020

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Bioinspired and biomimetic soft machines rely on functions and working principles that have been abstracted from biology but that have evolved over 3.5 billion years. So far, few examples from the huge pool of natural models have been examined and transferred to technical applications. Like living organisms, subsequent generations of soft machines will autonomously respond, sense, and adapt to the environment. Plants as concept generators remain relatively unexplored in biomimetic approaches to robotics and related technologies, despite being able to grow, and continuously adapt in response to environmental stimuli. In this research review, we highlight recent developments in plant-inspired soft machine systems based on movement principles. We focus on inspirations taken from fast active movements in the carnivorous Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and compare current developments in artificial Venus flytraps with their biological role model. The advantages and disadvantages of current systems are also analyzed and discussed, and a new state-of-the-art autonomous system is derived. Incorporation of the basic structural and functional principles of the Venus flytrap into novel autonomous applications in the field of robotics not only will inspire further plant-inspired biomimetic developments but might also advance contemporary plant-inspired robots, leading to fully autonomous systems utilizing bioinspired working concepts.

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Soft actuators using liquid crystal elastomers with encapsulated liquid metal joule heaters

Cited by 62 publications

References 53 publications

Aerosol Spray Deposition of Liquid Metal and Elastomer Coatings for Rapid Processing of Stretchable Electronics

Aerosol Spray Deposition of Liquid Metal and Elastomer Coatings for Rapid Processing of Stretchable Electronics

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

Artificial Venus Flytraps: A Research Review and Outlook on Their Importance for Novel Bioinspired Materials Systems

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