Oct 2026· Advanced Robotics Research· 0 citations· 46 references
Abstract
Effective soft microactuators must provide both significant displacement and sufficient force generation. To address this, an experimental method was developed to determine the force–displacement characteristics of poly(N‐isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM) microactuators fabricated via two‐photon polymerization. The influence of printing parameters on the contraction performance was first investigated, with axial strains between 0.2 and 1.2 being achieved. To quantify mechanical output, PNIPAM microactuators were directly printed onto glass cantilever beams with different stiffnesses (1–70 N/m), manufactured via a femtosecond laser‐assisted etching process. The resulting force was determined by measuring beam deflection in response to the thermal contraction of PNIPAM. At 25 °C, forces between 290 and 918 μN were measured, depending on the printing parameters. Although hyperelastic behavior was observed, the microactuators were modeled as purely elastic to estimate their effective Young's modulus as a function of temperature. The calculated modulus, ranging from 13.4 ± 1.75 to 64.6 ± 7.70 kPa (at 25 °C) to 39.0 ± 8.35 to 177 ± 34.8 kPa (at 45 °C) (depending on the printing parameters), followed a sigmoid curve consistent with the literature.
Pneumatic proprioceptive actuators integrate actuation and sensing for soft robots that attract interest due to functional potential. Existing approaches often suffer from assembly errors or stress concentrations caused by heterogeneous materials. In this work, we propose the Monolithic Force-Proprioception Soft (MFPS)...
Nan Huang, Le-Le Liu, Jun-Feng Lu et al.· 0 citations
Although the piezoresistive behavior of conductive polymer composites has been widely studied, the geometry-dependent piezoresistive response of MWCNT/PLA-based TPMS lattice structures produced by fused filament fabrication (FFF) remains insufficiently explored. The primary objective of this study is to comparatively i...
Mustafa Ercan Gündüz, Erkan Bahçe· Polymers· 0 citations
Mechanochemical reactions involve the use of applied mechanical distortions to reactants to drive chemical reactions. In this work, we demonstrate the use of mechanical force to direct location-specific reactions on suspended bilayer graphene microdrums, by manipulating their geometric landscape, through the introducti...
Edward J. Broker, Ting Liu, Riley Davenport et al.· ACS Applied Materials and In...· 0 citations
AIM
To compare the geometric and metallurgical features and mechanical performance of two contemporary reciprocating nickel-titanium instruments manufactured with and without additional engineered nanocoating technology.
METHODOLOGY
Excalibur (n = 57) and Excalibur Pro (n = 57) size 25/0.05 instruments were evaluated...
J. Martins, Emmanuel Silva, Filipa Neto et al.· International Endodontic Jou...· 0 citations
Precision instruments operating in harsh environments require protective materials that can dissipate impact energy while resisting heat. However, actively tunable thermomechanical protection under coupled multiphysics conditions remains challenging. Inspired by shellfish and echinoderms, here we show that an asymmetri...
Zi-Mu Li, Jian-Feng Huang, Sheng Wang et al.· Proceedings of the National...· 0 citations
Variable-stiffness tactile interfaces are of interest for applications including medical simulation, rehabilitation, and human–machine interaction, where controllable mechanical resistance is required during physical contact. Granular jamming provides a mechanically simple approach for modulating stiffness by transitio...
