Abstract
Many kinds of stimuli-responsive polymer and gels have been developed and applied to biomimetic actuators or artificial muscles. Electroactive polymers that change shape when stimulated electrically seem to be particularly promising. In all cases, however, the mechanical motion is driven by external stimuli, for example, reversing the direction of electric field. On the other hand, many living organisms can generate an autonomous motion without external driving stimuli like self-beating of heart muscles. Here we show a novel biomimetic gel actuator that can walk spontaneously with a worm-like motion without switching of external stimuli. The self-oscillating motion is produced by dissipating chemical energy of oscillating reaction. Although the gel is completely composed of synthetic polymer, it shows autonomous motion as if it were alive.
Highlights
Stimuli-responsive polymers and gels that swell or shrink in response to environmental changes [1,2,3,4,5] have been studied by many researchers
Since volume phase transition of polymer gels was found by Tanaka [9], many kinds of applications such as a drug delivery system [10], robotic hands [11], and matter transporting device [12], have been proposed in various fields
We introduce active polymer gel actuators
Summary
Stimuli-responsive polymers and gels that swell or shrink in response to environmental changes [1,2,3,4,5] have been studied by many researchers. The importance of these characteristics has been recognized from scientific and engineering points of view. Certain devices made of electro-active polymers have been developed [6,7]. They are expected to act as soft actuators because they are light, soft and flexible materials, but they can generate.
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