Taylor Ware

Electrically, Chemically, and Photonically Powered Torsional and Tensile Actuation of Hybrid Carbon Nanotube Yarn Muscles

Nanotube Yarn Actuators Actuators are used to convert heat, light, or electricity into a twisting or tensile motion, and are often described as artificial muscles. Most materials that show actuation either provide larger forces with small-amplitude motions, such as the alloy NiTi, or provide larger motions with much less force, such as polymeric materials. Other problems with such actuators can include slow response times and short lifetimes. Lima et al. (p. 928, see the Perspective by Schulz) show that a range of guest-filled, twist-spun carbon nanotube yarns can be used for linear or torsional actuation, can solve the problems of speed and lifetime, and do not require electrolytes for operation. Thermally driven actuators use a guest material within carbon nanotube yarns to generate fast torsional and tensile motions. Artificial muscles are of practical interest, but few types have been commercially exploited. Typical problems include slow response, low strain and force generation, short cycle life, use of electrolytes, and low energy efficiency. We have designed guest-filled, twist-spun carbon nanotube yarns as electrolyte-free muscles that provide fast, high-force, large-stroke torsional and tensile actuation. More than a million torsional and tensile actuation cycles are demonstrated, wherein a muscle spins a rotor at an average 11,500 revolutions/minute or delivers 3% tensile contraction at 1200 cycles/minute. Electrical, chemical, or photonic excitation of hybrid yarns changes guest dimensions and generates torsional rotation and contraction of the yarn host. Demonstrations include torsional motors, contractile muscles, and sensors that capture the energy of the sensing process to mechanically actuate.

Ultraflexible, large-area, physiological temperature sensors for multipoint measurements

Significance We have successfully fabricated very unique ultraflexible temperature sensors that exhibit changes in resistivity by six orders of magnitude or more for a change in temperature of only 5 °C or less. Our approach offers an ideal solution to measure temperature over a large area with high spatial resolution, high sensitivity of 0.1 °C or less, and fast response time of 100 ms. Indeed, such a large change of resistivity for our sensors can significantly simplify the readout circuitry, which was the key to demonstrate, to our knowledge, the world’s first successful measurement of dynamic change of temperature in the lung during very fast artificial respiration. Furthermore, we have demonstrated real-time multipoint thermal sensing using organic transistor active-matrix circuits. We report a fabrication method for flexible and printable thermal sensors based on composites of semicrystalline acrylate polymers and graphite with a high sensitivity of 20 mK and a high-speed response time of less than 100 ms. These devices exhibit large resistance changes near body temperature under physiological conditions with high repeatability (1,800 times). Device performance is largely unaffected by bending to radii below 700 µm, which allows for conformal application to the surface of living tissue. The sensing temperature can be tuned between 25 °C and 50 °C, which covers all relevant physiological temperatures. Furthermore, we demonstrate flexible active-matrix thermal sensors which can resolve spatial temperature gradients over a large area. With this flexible ultrasensitive temperature sensor we succeeded in the in vivo measurement of cyclic temperatures changes of 0.1 °C in a rat lung during breathing, without interference from constant tissue motion. This result conclusively shows that the lung of a warm-blooded animal maintains surprising temperature stability despite the large difference between core temperature and inhaled air temperature.

Mechanically Adaptive Organic Transistors for Implantable Electronics

A unique form of adaptive electronics is demonstrated, which change their mechanical properties from rigid and planar to soft and compliant, in order to enable soft and conformal wrapping around 3D objects, including biological tissue. These devices feature excellent mechanical robustness and maintain initial electrical properties even after changing shape and stiffness.

Thiol-ene/acrylate substrates for softening intracortical electrodes

Neural interfaces have traditionally been fabricated on rigid and planar substrates, including silicon and engineering thermoplastics. However, the neural tissue with which these devices interact is both 3D and highly compliant. The mechanical mismatch at the biotic-abiotic interface is expected to contribute to the tissue response that limits chronic signal recording and stimulation. In this work, novel ternary thiol-ene/acrylate polymer networks are used to create softening substrates for neural recording electrodes. Thermomechanical properties of the substrates are studied through differential scanning calorimetry and dynamic mechanical analysis both before and after exposure physiological conditions. This substrate system softens from more than 1 GPa to 18 MPa on exposure to physiological conditions: reaching body temperature and taking up less than 3% fluid. The impedance of 177 µm(2) gold electrodes electroplated with platinum black fabricated on these substrates is measured to be 206 kΩ at 1 kHz. Specifically, intracortical electrodes are fabricated, implanted, and used to record driven neural activity. This work describes the first substrate system that can use the full capabilities of photolithography, respond to physiological conditions by softening markedly after insertion, and record driven neural activity for 4 weeks.

Smart Polymers for Neural Interfaces

Thermomechanical properties of smart polymers can be specifically tuned to address critical problems in neural interfaces. A compilation of materials and approaches is presented from each of three often overlapping research communities: shape memory polymers, hydrogels, and neural interfaces. The path toward chronically implantable devices for neural recording and stimulation relies on careful control of mechanical, chemical, electronic and geometric properties of next generation devices. These phenomena are described and put into a context of modulus changing materials, as opposed to the current focus on shape changing materials, as a paradigm that may lead to new discoveries addressing unmet clinical needs.

Localized soft elasticity in liquid crystal elastomers

Synthetic approaches to prepare designer materials that localize deformation, by combining rigidity and compliance in a single material, have been widely sought. Bottom-up approaches, such as the self-organization of liquid crystals, offer potential advantages over top–down patterning methods such as photolithographic control of crosslink density, relating to the ease of preparation and fidelity of resolution. Here, we report on the directed self-assembly of materials with spatial and hierarchical variation in mechanical anisotropy. The highly nonlinear mechanical properties of the liquid crystalline elastomers examined here enables strain to be locally reduced >15-fold without introducing compositional variation or other heterogeneities. Each domain (⩾0.01 mm2) exhibits anisotropic nonlinear response to load based on the alignment of the molecular orientation with the loading axis. Accordingly, we design monoliths that localize deformation in uniaxial and biaxial tension, shear, bending and crack propagation, and subsequently demonstrate substrates for globally deformable yet locally stiff electronics.

Mechanical Cycling Stability of Organic Thin Film Transistors on Shape Memory Polymers

Organic thin film transistors on shape memory polymers are fabricated by full photolithography. Devices show high mobility (0.2 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1)) and close to zero threshold voltage (-4.5 V) when characterized as fabricated. After 1, 10, and 100 deformation cycles and in a deformed, metastable shape memory transition state, changes in mobility and V(th) are measured and indicate sustained device functionality.

Four-dimensional Printing of Liquid Crystal Elastomers

Three-dimensional structures capable of reversible changes in shape, i.e., four-dimensional-printed structures, may enable new generations of soft robotics, implantable medical devices, and consumer products. Here, thermally responsive liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are direct-write printed into 3D structures with a controlled molecular order. Molecular order is locally programmed by controlling the print path used to build the 3D object, and this order controls the stimulus response. Each aligned LCE filament undergoes 40% reversible contraction along the print direction on heating. By printing objects with controlled geometry and stimulus response, magnified shape transformations, for example, volumetric contractions or rapid, repetitive snap-through transitions, are realized.

Tunable thiol-epoxy shape memory polymer foams

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) are uniquely suited to a number of applications due to their shape storage and recovery abilities and the wide range of available chemistries. However, many of the desired performance properties are tied to the polymer chemistry which can make optimization difficult. The use of foaming techniques is one way to tune mechanical response of an SMP without changing the polymer chemistry. In this work, a novel thiol–epoxy SMP was foamed using glass microspheres (40 and 50% by volume Q-Cel 6019), using expandable polymer microspheres (1% 930 DU 120), and by a chemical blowing agent (1% XOP-341). Each approach created SMP foam with a differing density and microstructure from the others. Thermal and thermomechanical analysis was performed to observe the behavioral difference between the foaming techniques and to confirm that the glass transition (Tg) was relatively unchanged near 50 °C while the glassy modulus varied from 19.1 to 345 MPa and the rubbery modulus varied from 0.04 to 2.2 MPa. The compressive behavior of the foams was characterized through static compression testing at different temperatures, and cyclic compression testing at Tg. Constrained shape recovery testing showed a range of peak recovery stress from 5 MPa for the syntactic Q-Cel foams to ~0.1 MPa for the chemically blown XOP-341 foam. These results showed that multiple foaming approaches can be used with a novel SMP to vary the mechanical response independent of Tg and polymer chemistry.

Degradable, silyl ether thiol–ene networks

A system of multifunctional silyl ether containing alkene and thiol monomers are synthesized and polymerized into uniform degradable networks with widely tunable thermomechanical properties. The glass transition temperature of the hydrolytically unstable networks can be controlled between −60 °C and 40 °C. Near total degradation is observed and the rate of degradation is controlled to occur between hours and months. Dynamic mechanical analysis, mass loss, uniaxial compression testing, multinuclear NMR spectroscopy, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry are utilized to characterize the degradation of these networks. Importantly, this system of materials allows for rapid hydrolytic degradation that is not preceded by swelling. These degradable polymers are demonstrated to be compatible with microfabrication techniques, namely photolithography. As a demonstration, partially biodegradable cortical electrodes were fabricated and electrochemically characterized on silyl ether substrates.