Toward nano-biomimetic muscles: polyacrylonitrile nanofibers

Ravikant Samatham; Kiyoung Choe; Kwang Jin Kim; Mohsen Shahinpoor; Jaedo Nam

doi:10.1117/12.534363

27 July 2004 Toward nano-biomimetic muscles: polyacrylonitrile nanofibers

Ravikant Samatham, Kiyoung Choe, Kwang Jin Kim, Mohsen Shahinpoor, Jaedo Nam

Proceedings Volume 5385, Smart Structures and Materials 2004: Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD); (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.534363
Event: Smart Structures and Materials, 2004, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The important characteristics of the activated Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers are its ability to change in length more than 100% and its comparable strength to human muscle. As against to other reported works in which commercially available fibers with diameters in the range of 10s of micrometers were used, here we tried to study the phenomenon in a few hundred nanometer diameter fibers. These fibers are expected to have smaller response times and higher deformations than conventional micronsized fibers. These PAN fibers were made by electrospinning. The fibers are placed in a solution and the change in the shape of the fibers was observed with change in pH. The fibers contracted in acidic solution and expanded in basic solution similar to that reported in the literature. Here we measured the variation in the diameter of the fibers using E-SEM while the change in pH is taking place. It appears that a variation of more than 100% was observed similar to that observed with conventional fibers of diameter ranging from 10 to 50mm. These results provide a potential in developing fast actuating PAN muscles and linear acuators, and muscle structures similar to sarcomere/myosin/actin-like assembly. In addition, we were able to observe giant volume changes more than 1,000% with conventional PAN fibers.

Citation Download Citation

Ravikant Samatham, Kiyoung Choe, Kwang Jin Kim, Mohsen Shahinpoor, and Jaedo Nam "Toward nano-biomimetic muscles: polyacrylonitrile nanofibers", Proc. SPIE 5385, Smart Structures and Materials 2004: Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD), (27 July 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.534363

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