Toward an Electroactive Polymer-Based Soft Microgripper

Grasping and manipulating objects on a microscale hold great promise, especially using mechanical structures made from soft materials that enable, for example, safe operations during microsurgery. Soft robots should be preferred to manipulate micro-objects, but their adoption requires, inter alia, soft transducers that can operate either in air or in solution. Ultimately, they should enable actuation at low voltage, as well as be easy to fabricate. This paper presents the results on our investigations about conducting polymers -based transducers. We demonstrate that this material is suitable to construct sensitive structures and a microgripper is proposed to illustrate the results. Large strains were observed and a grasping force of 0.17 mN was generated. Moreover, compared to previous work, we show that the fabrication process can be downscaled while preserving the behavior of the material in both actuation and sensing modes. The macroscale mechanical models obtained are still valid for microscale actuation and sensing.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates the potential of using conducting polymers to fabricate transducers for micro-scale manipulation and sensing. The results show that this material is suitable for constructing sensitive microstructures, with the successful demonstration of large strains and small grasping forces. Furthermore, the fabrication process can be downscaled while preserving material behavior for both actuation and sensing modes, indicating the validity of macroscale mechanical models for microscale applications.