Bioinspired and Hierarchically Textile‐Structured Soft Actuators for Healthcare Wearables. (18th November 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yang, Mengxin; Wu, Jing; Jiang, Wenjie; Hu, Xiaorui; Iqbal, Mohammad Irfan; Sun, Fengxin
• Is Part Of: Advanced functional materials. Volume 33:Number 5(2023)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2022-11-18
• Subjects: actuators -- bioinspired -- healthcare -- multi‐modal deformations -- wearables; Materials -- Periodicals; Chemical vapor deposition -- Periodicals; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202210351
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1616-301X

Abstract

Abstract: Soft pneumatic actuators possess the increasing potential for various healthcare applications, such as smart wearable devices, safe human‐robot interaction, and flexible manipulators. However, it is difficult to translate the existing technologies to commercial applications due to their inefficient volumetric power, sophisticated control with high operation pressure, slow production, and high cost. To overcome these issues, herein, a caterpillar‐inspired actuator using hierarchical textile architectures based on simple fabrication and low‐cost strategy is designed. Unlike the existing textile‐based pneumatic actuators, the designed actuators are constructed by combining boucle fancy yarns with a novel trilayer‐knit architecture. The as‐prepared actuators concurrently possess fast response (1100° s −1 ), large bending actuation strain (1080° m −1 ), high‐power density (272 W m −3 ), mechanical robustness, easy‐programmable motions, and human‐tactile comfort, which outperforms currently reported textile‐based pneumatic actuators. Furthermore, due to the geometrical transition of the engineered hierarchical structure, the developed actuators exhibit superior dual‐stiffness effect with stress evolution, providing a facile approach to addressing the conflict of flexibility and force output in soft fluidic actuators. This concept as a paradigm provides new insights to develop soft actuators with outstanding design flexibility, adaptability, and multifunctionality using engineered textile‐structure, which has great potential for real‐world applications in medical rehabilitation, physiotherapy, and soft robotics. Abstract : Superanisotropicity and dual‐stiffness characteristics of a novel hierarchical structure constructed by boucle fancy yarns and trilayer‐knit architectures are embraced to design robust soft pneumatic actuators. The developed actuators show superior features, such as fast response, large actuation strain, high‐power density, mechanical robustness, easy‐programmable motions, and human‐tactile comfort. This study puts forward hierarchical structure transition as a paradigm of textile‐based actuators for promising real‐world applications, such as medical rehabilitation, physiotherapy, and soft robotics.