title: Knitting and weaving artificial muscles.
abstract: A need exists for artificial muscles that are silent, soft, and compliant, with performance characteristics similar to those of skeletal muscle, enabling natural interaction of assistive devices with humans. By combining one of humankind's oldest technologies, textile processing, with electroactive polymers, we demonstrate here the feasibility of wearable, soft artificial muscles made by weaving and knitting, with tunable force and strain. These textile actuators were produced from cellulose yarns assembled into fabrics and coated with conducting polymers using a metal-free deposition. To increase the output force, we assembled yarns in parallel by weaving. The force scaled linearly with the number of yarns in the woven fabric. To amplify the strain, we knitted a stretchable fabric, exhibiting a 53-fold increase in strain. In addition, the textile construction added mechanical stability to the actuators. Textile processing permits scalable and rational production of wearable artificial muscles, and enables novel ways to design assistive devices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Biosensors and Bioelectronics Centre, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maziz
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Biosensors and Bioelectronics Centre, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Concas
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Biosensors and Bioelectronics Centre, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khaldi
authors.affiliation: Department of Management and Engineering (IEI), Solid Mechanics, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9891-6783
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stålhand
authors.affiliation: Swedish School of Textiles (THS), Smart Textiles, University of Borås, 50190 Borås, Sweden.
authors.forename: Nils-Krister
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Persson
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Biosensors and Bioelectronics Centre, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Edwin W H
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2071-7768
authors.initials: EW
authors.lastname: Jager
mesh_terms: D001187:Artificial Organs; D006801:Humans; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal; D012371:Robotics
keywords: Artificial muscles; Conducting Polymers; actuators; advanced textile technology; soft robotics