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Review of Soft Actuator Materials

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Abstract

Soft actuator materials change their shape or size in response to stimuli like electricity, heat, light, chemical or pH. These actuator materials are compliant and well suited for soft mechatronics and robots. This paper introduces the definition of soft materials and the position of soft actuator materials in comparison with conventional actuators and other solid state actuator materials. A thorough review of selected soft actuator materials is carried out, including responsive gels/hydrogels, ionic polymer metal composites, conducting polymers, carbon nanotubues/graphenes, dielectric elastomers, shape memory polymers and biopolymers. This review will give insights for applications of soft actuator materials via better understanding of the materials in terms of their preparation, performance and limitation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Creative Research Initiatives Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and ICT (NRF-2015R1A3A2066301).

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, CRC for Nanocellulose Future Composites, Inha University, Incheon, 22212, Korea

    Jaehwan Kim, Jung Woong Kim, Hyun Chan Kim, Lindong Zhai, Hyun-U Ko & Ruth M. Muthoka

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Kim, J., Kim, J.W., Kim, H.C. et al. Review of Soft Actuator Materials. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 20, 2221–2241 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-019-00255-1

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