Actuators are devices capable of moving or controlling objects and systems by applying mechanical force on them. Among all kinds of actuators with different shapes, fibrous ones deserve particular attention. In spite of their apparent simplicity, actuating fibers allow for very complex actuation behavior. This review discusses different approaches for the design of actuating fibers, and their advantages and disadvantages. We also discuss the prospects for the design of fibers with advanced architectures and complex actuation behavior.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.6b07374 | DOI Listing |
Adv Sci (Weinh)
December 2024
Department of Ultrasound in Medicine, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, No. 600, Yishan Road, Shanghai, 200233, P. R. China.
Rapid thrombolysis is very important to reduce complications caused by vascular blockage. A promising approach for improving thrombolysis efficiency is utilizing the permanent magnetically actuated locomotion of nanorobots. However, the thrombolytic drug transportation efficiency is challenged by in-plane rotating locomotion and the insufficient drug penetration limits further improvement of thrombolysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Synchrotron Radiat
January 2025
CAEN, Viareggio, Italy.
We provide a technical description and experimental results of the practical development and offline testing of an innovative, closed-loop, adaptive mirror system capable of making rapid, precise and ultra-stable changes in the size and shape of reflected X-ray beams generated at synchrotron light and free-electron laser facilities. The optical surface of a piezoelectric bimorph deformable mirror is continuously monitored at 20 kHz by an array of interferometric sensors. This matrix of height data is autonomously converted into voltage commands that are sent at 1 Hz to the piezo actuators to modify the shape of the mirror optical surface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdv Sci (Weinh)
December 2024
State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China.
Regarding the challenge of self-reconfiguration and self-amputation of soft robots, existing studies mainly focus on modular soft robots and connection methods between modules. Different from these studies, this study focus on the behavior of individual soft robots from a material perspective. Here, a kind of soft fibers, which consist of hot melt adhesive particles, magnetizable microparticles, and ferroferric oxide microparticles embedded in a thermoplastic polyurethane matrix are proposed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolymers (Basel)
November 2024
School of Microelectronics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
Mechanocaloric cooling/heat pumping with zero carbon emission and high efficiency shows great potential for replacing traditional refrigeration with vapor compression. Mechanocaloric prototypes that are developed using shape memory alloys (SMAs) face the problems of a large driving force and high cost. In this work, we report a low-crystalline thermoplastic polyetherurethane (TPU) elastomer fiber with a low actuation force and good mechanocaloric performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Mol Neurosci
November 2024
Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada.
A major intracellular messenger implicated in synaptic plasticity and cognitive functions both in health and disease is cyclic GMP (cGMP). Utilizing a photoactivatable guanylyl cyclase (BlgC) actuator to increase cGMP in dentate granule neurons of the hippocampus by light, we studied the effects of spatiotemporal cGMP elevations in synaptic and cognitive functions. At medial perforant path to dentate gyrus (MPP-DG) synapses, we found enhanced long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic responses when postsynaptic cGMP was elevated during the induction period.
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