What’s better than successfully creating an artificial muscle that heals itself? Having that muscle charge your iPhone or other gadgets!
Combining breakthroughs in self-healing materials and artificial arms, University of California, Los Angeles researchers created such muscles that can generate electricity. The research could be used to make walking robots and develop better prosthetics that juice your iPod. Part of the technology is already being used in Japan to charge batteries using ocean waves.
The researchers used flexible carbon nanotubes as electrodes instead of metal-based films that fail after repeated use. If an area of the carbon nanotube fails, the region around it seals itself by becoming non-conductive preventing the fault from spreading to other areas.
"We've made an artificial muscle that, when you apply electricity to it, it expands" more than 200 percent, said Qibing Pei, a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and study author. "The motion and energy is a lot like human muscles." "It conserves about 70 percent of the energy you put into it," said Pei. As the material contracts after an expansion the rearranging of the carbon nanotubes generates a small electric current that can be captured and used to power another expansion or stored in a battery.
(engadget)
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