Northwestern Events Calendar

Apr
2
2015

P&A Complex Systems Seminar - Ray H. Baughman, Featured Speaker

When: Thursday, April 2, 2015
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM CT

Where: Technological Institute, F160, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Leah Handel  

Group: Physics and Astronomy Complex Systems Seminars

Category: Academic

Description:

Ray H. Baughman

Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry
Director, Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute
University of Texas, Dallas

The Evolution of Strong, Fast, Powerful, Durable, and Cheap Polymer Artificial Muscles from Carbon Nanotube Muscles

Three successive generations of twist-spun artificial muscles are described that provide both torsional and tensile actuation [1]. Our first generation of twist-spun muscles, which are electrochemically powered by volume changes induced by double-layer charge injection, provide torsional rotation speeds of 590 rpm, and torsional strokes of 250° per millimeter of actuator length, which is 1000 times that for earlier artificial muscles. Our second generation muscles, which require no electrolyte and are based on guest-infiltrated carbon nanotube yarns, can torsionally actuate at 11,500 rpm and deliver 85 times higher power density during contraction than natural muscles. Our third generation muscles, which are thermally, electrothermally, or chemically powered polymer fibers, can rotate at 50,000 rpm, contract by up to 49%, generate 5 times the gravimetric power of a car engine, lift 100 times heavier loads than the same length and weight human muscle, or actuate at 7.5 cycles/s for millions of cycles. These polymer muscles can be cheaply made from fishing line or sewing thread.

[1] This work, predominately funded by Les Lee of AFOSR, resulted from collaboration between The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Wollongong (Australia), The University of British Columbia (Canada), Hanyang University (South Korea), Namık Kemal University (Turkey), and a visiting student from Jilin University (China).

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