Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA.
Science. 2019 Jul 12;365(6449):150-155. doi: 10.1126/science.aaw2403.
Although guest-filled carbon nanotube yarns provide record performance as torsional and tensile artificial muscles, they are expensive, and only part of the muscle effectively contributes to actuation. We describe a muscle type that provides higher performance, in which the guest that drives actuation is a sheath on a twisted or coiled core that can be an inexpensive yarn. This change from guest-filled to sheath-run artificial muscles increases the maximum work capacity by factors of 1.70 to 2.15 for tensile muscles driven electrothermally or by vapor absorption. A sheath-run electrochemical muscle generates 1.98 watts per gram of average contractile power-40 times that for human muscle and 9.0 times that of the highest power alternative electrochemical muscle. Theory predicts the observed performance advantages of sheath-run muscles.
尽管充满客体的碳纳米管纤维作为扭转和拉伸人工肌肉提供了创纪录的性能，但它们价格昂贵，而且只有部分肌肉能有效地参与运动。我们描述了一种性能更高的肌肉类型，其中驱动运动的客体是缠绕或卷曲核心上的护套，可以是廉价的纤维纱。这种从充满客体的人工肌肉到护套运行的人工肌肉的转变，使电热或蒸汽吸收驱动的拉伸肌肉的最大工作能力提高了 1.70 到 2.15 倍。护套运行的电化学肌肉每克平均收缩功率产生 1.98 瓦——是人体肌肉的 40 倍，是最高功率替代电化学肌肉的 9.0 倍。理论预测了护套运行肌肉的观察到的性能优势。
