Liquid crystalline elastomers as artificial muscles and flexible actuators for robotics/hybrid engineered machinery

IF 23.2 2区材料科学 Q1 MATERIALS SCIENCE, COMPOSITES Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials Pub Date : 2024-10-18 DOI:10.1007/s42114-024-00988-2

Joshua Ince, Krishnamurthy Prasad, Karamat Subhani, Alan Duffy, Nisa Salim

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Abstract

Reducing the weight and profile of machinery and robotics is currently a prime challenge for materials scientists and engineers alike. Solving this challenge could lead to an improvement in space travel feasibility, manufacturing capability, and the birth of new medical interventions and technologies altogether. LCEs are currently considered to hold good potential as artificial muscles due to their unique molecular structure. With the recent boom in materials science and the emergence of advanced fabrication techniques, LCE-based artificial muscles/flexible actuators are at the cusp of commercialization. LCEs can now be fabricated into several different forms (films, fibers, and 3D printed arbitrary shapes). Furthermore, LCE artificial muscles fabricated using these advanced techniques can also be functionalized so that they can controllably be triggered into actuating via stimuli such as light or electrical currents. This has led to reports of several LCE-based artificial muscles which boast impressive performance as artificial muscles. For example, recently certain Joule heating LCE fibers can directly be stimulated into actuation via the application of electrical currents and can actuate on sub-second time frames and outperform human skeletal muscles in terms of actuation stress. Given this, whilst currently there are no commercial applications of LCEs as artificial muscles in robotics, we believe that LCEs are poised to soon be directly applicable as artificial muscles in the broader field of robotics, which inspired us to author this review. This review presents an overview of the mechanisms, synthetic methods, and alignment methods for LCEs. In addition, we provide the latest achievements in fabrication techniques and means of inducing/controlling the actuation of LCEs. We do so in the aspiration that this review can bridge the gap that exists between academia and industry on the topic of LCEs.

Graphical abstract

Illustration of LCEs acting as artificial muscles in robotics.

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液晶弹性体作为机器人/混合工程机械的人造肌肉和柔性致动器

减轻机械和机器人的重量和外形是材料科学家和工程师目前面临的首要挑战。解决这一难题可以提高太空旅行的可行性和制造能力，并催生新的医疗干预措施和技术。LCE 因其独特的分子结构，目前被认为具有作为人造肌肉的良好潜力。随着近年来材料科学的蓬勃发展和先进制造技术的出现，基于 LCE 的人造肌肉/柔性致动器正处于商业化的风口浪尖。现在，LCE 可以制成多种不同的形状（薄膜、纤维和 3D 打印的任意形状）。此外，利用这些先进技术制造的 LCE 人工肌肉还可以进行功能化处理，使其可以通过光或电流等刺激进行可控触发。因此，一些基于 LCE 的人造肌肉的报道令人印象深刻。例如，最近某些焦耳加热 LCE 纤维可直接通过电流刺激启动，并能在亚秒级时间内启动，在启动压力方面优于人类骨骼肌。有鉴于此，虽然目前还没有将 LCE 作为人工肌肉应用于机器人领域的商业应用，但我们相信 LCE 将很快作为人工肌肉直接应用于更广泛的机器人领域，这也是我们撰写本综述的灵感来源。本综述概述了 LCE 的机制、合成方法和配准方法。此外，我们还介绍了 LCE 的制造技术和诱导/控制驱动手段方面的最新成果。我们这样做的目的是希望这篇综述能够弥补学术界和工业界在 LCE 这一主题上存在的差距。

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来源期刊

Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials Multiple-

CiteScore

26.00

自引率

21.40%

发文量

185

期刊介绍： Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials is a leading international journal that promotes interdisciplinary collaboration among materials scientists, engineers, chemists, biologists, and physicists working on composites, including nanocomposites. Our aim is to facilitate rapid scientific communication in this field. The journal publishes high-quality research on various aspects of composite materials, including materials design, surface and interface science/engineering, manufacturing, structure control, property design, device fabrication, and other applications. We also welcome simulation and modeling studies that are relevant to composites. Additionally, papers focusing on the relationship between fillers and the matrix are of particular interest. Our scope includes polymer, metal, and ceramic matrices, with a special emphasis on reviews and meta-analyses related to materials selection. We cover a wide range of topics, including transport properties, strategies for controlling interfaces and composition distribution, bottom-up assembly of nanocomposites, highly porous and high-density composites, electronic structure design, materials synergisms, and thermoelectric materials. Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials follows a rigorous single-blind peer-review process to ensure the quality and integrity of the published work.