• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Electrical Engineering News and Products

Electronics Engineering Resources, Articles, Forums, Tear Down Videos and Technical Electronics How-To's

  • Products / Components
    • Analog ICs
    • Connectors
    • Microcontrollers
    • Power Electronics
    • Sensors
    • Test and Measurement
    • Wire / Cable
  • Applications
    • Automotive/Transportation
    • Industrial
    • IoT
    • Medical
    • Telecommunications
    • Wearables
    • Wireless
  • Resources
    • DesignFast
    • Digital Issues
    • Engineering Week
    • Oscilloscope Product Finder
    • Podcasts
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • White Papers
    • Women in Engineering
  • Videos
    • Teschler’s Teardown Videos
    • EE Videos and Interviews
  • Learning Center
    • EE Classrooms
    • Design Guides
      • WiFi & the IOT Design Guide
      • Microcontrollers Design Guide
      • State of the Art Inductors Design Guide
      • Power Electronics & Programmable Power
    • FAQs
    • Ebooks / Tech Tips
  • EE Forums
    • EDABoard.com
    • Electro-Tech-Online.com
  • 5G

A Wolverine-Inspired Material

December 27, 2016 By University of California - Riverside

Scientists, including several from the University of California, Riverside, have developed a transparent, self-healing, highly stretchable conductive material that can be electrically activated to power artificial muscles and could be used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots.

The findings, which were published today in the journal Advanced Material, represent the first time scientists have created an ionic conductor, meaning materials that ions can flow through, that is transparent, mechanically stretchable, and self-healing.

The material has potential applications in a wide range of fields. It could give robots the ability to self-heal after mechanical failure; extend the lifetime of lithium ion batteries used in electronics and electric cars; and improve biosensors used in the medical field and environmental monitoring.

“Creating a material with all these properties has been a puzzle for years,” said Chao Wang, an adjunct assistant professor of chemistry who is one of the authors of the paper. “We did that and now are just beginning to explore the applications.”

This project brings together the research areas of self-healing materials and ionic conductors.

Inspired by wound healing in nature, self-healing materials repair damage caused by wear and extend the lifetime, and lower the cost, of materials and devices. Wang developed an interest in self-healing materials because of his lifelong love of Wolverine, the comic book character who has the ability to self-heal.

Ionic conductors are a class of materials with key roles in energy storage, solar energy conversion, sensors, and electronic devices.

Another author of the paper, Christoph Keplinger, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, previously demonstrated that stretchable, transparent, ionic conductors can be used to power artificial muscles and to create transparent loudspeakers — devices that feature several of the key properties of the new material (transparency, high stretchability and ionic conductivity) — but none of these devices additionally had the ability to self-heal from mechanical damage.

The key difficulty is the identification of bonds that are stable and reversible under electrochemical conditions. Conventionally, self-healing polymers make use of non-covalent bonds, which creates a problem because those bonds are affected by electrochemical reactions that degrade the performance of the materials.

Wang helped solve that problem by using a mechanism called ion-dipole interactions, which are forces between charged ions and polar molecules that are highly stabile under electrochemical conditions. He combined a polar, stretchable polymer with a mobile, high-ionic-strength salt to create the material with the properties the researchers were seeking.

The low-cost, easy to produce soft rubber-like material can stretch 50 times its original length. After being cut, it can completely re-attach, or heal, in 24 hours at room temperature. In fact, after only five minutes of healing the material can be stretched two times its original length.

Timothy Morrissey and Eric Acome, two graduate students working with Keplinger, demonstrated that the material could be used to power a so-called artificial muscle, also called dielectric elastomer actuator. Artificial muscle is a generic term used for materials or devices that can reversibly contract, expand, or rotate due to an external stimulus such as voltage, current, pressure or temperature.

The dielectric elastomer actuator is actually three individual pieces of polymer that are stacked together. The top and bottom layers are the new material developed at UC Riverside, which is able to conduct electricity and is self-healable, and the middle layer is a transparent, non-conductive rubber-like membrane.

The researchers used electrical signals to get the artificial muscle to move. So, just like how a human muscle (such as a bicep) moves when the brain sends a signal to the arm, the artificial muscle also reacts when it receives a signal. Most importantly, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the ability of the new material to self-heal can be used to mimic a preeminent survival feature of nature: wound-healing. After parts of the artificial muscle were cut into two separate pieces, the material healed without relying on external stimuli, and the artificial muscle returned to the same level of performance as before being cut.

Filed Under: Power Electronic Tips

Primary Sidebar

EE Training Center Classrooms.

EE Classrooms

Featured Resources

  • EE World Online Learning Center
  • RF Testing Basics
  • Power Supply Fundamentals
  • Women in Engineering
  • R&D 100 Podcast
Search Millions of Parts from Thousands of Suppliers.

Search Now!
design fast globle

R&D World Podcasts

R&D 100 Episode 8
See More >

Current Digital Issue

June 2022 Special Edition: Test & Measurement Handbook

A frequency you can count on There are few constants in life, but what few there are might include death, taxes, and a U.S. grid frequency that doesn’t vary by more than ±0.5 Hz. However, the certainty of the grid frequency is coming into question, thanks to the rising percentage of renewable energy sources that…

Digital Edition Back Issues

Sponsored Content

New Enterprise Solutions for 112 Gbps PAM4 Applications in Development from I-PEX

Positioning in 5G NR – A look at the technology and related test aspects

Radar, NFC, UV Sensors, and Weather Kits are Some of the New RAKwireless Products for IoT

5G Connectors: Enabling the global 5G vision

Control EMI with I-PEX ZenShield™ Connectors

Speed-up time-to-tapeout with the Aprisa digital place-and-route system and Solido Characterization Suite

More Sponsored Content >>

RSS Current EDABoard.com discussions

  • I need help building Yocto (poky) for a specific HW/Target > Licheepi Zero Dock (Allwinner V3S)
  • Input Reference Clock for PLL aside from Crystal Oscillator
  • Digital Attenuator Power Dissipation
  • 3 Phase - Phase Cross Detection (Not Zero Cross)
  • Detecting audio (with limited processing power)

RSS Current Electro-Tech-Online.com Discussions

  • Capacitor to eliminate speaker hum
  • Help identify a part
  • Digital Display Information
  • Is there a discord for this forum?
  • Peltier control

Oscilloscopes Product Finder

Footer

EE World Online

EE WORLD ONLINE NETWORK

  • 5G Technology World
  • Analog IC Tips
  • Battery Power Tips
  • Connector Tips
  • DesignFast
  • EDABoard Forums
  • Electro-Tech-Online Forums
  • Engineer's Garage
  • Microcontroller Tips
  • Power Electronic Tips
  • Sensor Tips
  • Test and Measurement Tips
  • Wire & Cable Tips

EE WORLD ONLINE

  • Subscribe to our newsletter
  • Lee's teardown videos
  • Advertise with us
  • Contact us
  • About Us
Follow us on TwitterAdd us on FacebookConnect with us on LinkedIn Follow us on YouTube Add us on Instagram

Copyright © 2022 · WTWH Media LLC and its licensors. All rights reserved.
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media.

Privacy Policy