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Towards artificial muscles

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
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Abstract

Solid state actuators (piezoelectric, ferroelectric, ...) deform under an external field, and have found many applications. They respond fast, but their mechanical deformations are very small. There is a need for soft actuators, giving larger responses, but necessarily less fast. This paper describes the early attempts by Katchalsky and others, and the problems which showed up -related to time constants, and, most importantly, to fatigue. Two current attempts are reviewed.

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Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. 2000-03-06. Towards artificial muscles. https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0003012

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