Key Laboratory of Eco-textiles of Ministry of Education, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China.
Laboratory of Soft Fibrous Materials, College of Textile Science and Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Nov 17;13(45):54386-54395. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c16323. Epub 2021 Nov 7.
Fiber-based artificial muscles with excellent actuation performance are gaining great attention as soft materials for flexible actuators; however, current advances in fiber-based artificial muscles generally suffer from high cost, harsh stimulation regimes, limiting deformations, chemical toxicity, or complex manufacturing processing, which hinder the widespread application of those artificial muscles in engineering and practical usage. Herein, a facile cross-scale processing strategy is presented to construct commercially available nontoxic viscose fibers into fast responsive and humidity-driven yarn artificial muscles with a recorded torsional stroke of 1752° cm and a maximum rotation speed up to 2100 rpm, which are comparable to certain artificial muscles made from carbon-based composite materials. The underlying mechanism of such outstanding actuation performance that begins to form at a mesoscale is discussed by theoretical modeling and microstructure characterization. The as-prepared yarn artificial muscles are further scaled up to large-sized fabric muscles through topological weaving structures by integrating different textile technologies. These fabric muscles extend the simple motion of yarn muscles into higher-level diverse deformations without any composite system, complex synthetic processing, and component design, which enables the development of new fiber-based artificial muscles for versatile applications, such as smart textiles and intelligent systems.
基于纤维的人工肌肉具有出色的驱动性能，作为柔性致动器的软材料受到了极大的关注；然而，目前基于纤维的人工肌肉的进展通常受到高成本、苛刻的刺激方案、限制变形、化学毒性或复杂制造工艺的限制，这阻碍了这些人工肌肉在工程和实际应用中的广泛应用。在此，提出了一种简便的跨尺度加工策略，将市售的无毒粘胶纤维构建成快速响应和湿度驱动的纱线人工肌肉，其扭转行程为 1752°cm，最大转速高达 2100rpm，可与某些由碳基复合材料制成的人工肌肉相媲美。通过理论建模和微观结构表征讨论了这种在介观尺度开始形成的出色驱动性能的潜在机制。通过拓扑编织结构将制备好的纱线人工肌肉进一步扩展到大尺寸的织物肌肉，集成了不同的纺织技术。这些织物肌肉将纱线肌肉的简单运动扩展为更高级别的多种变形，而无需任何复合系统、复杂的合成处理和组件设计，这为各种应用（如智能纺织品和智能系统）开发新的基于纤维的人工肌肉提供了可能。
