E-Mail
IMAGE: In a study posted online Jan. 28 in the journal Science, University of Texas at Dallas researchers and their colleagues describe creating powerful, unipolar electrochemical yarn muscles that contract more. view more
Credit: University of Texas at Dallas
For more than 15 years, researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas and their collaborators in the U.S., Australia, South Korea and China have fabricated artificial muscles by twisting and coiling carbon nanotube or polymer yarns. When thermally powered, these muscles actuate by contracting their length when heated and returning to their initial length when cooled. Such thermally driven artificial muscles, however, have limitations.