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Researchers at the University of Texas and Pusan National University created fuel-powered artificial muscles using carbon nanotube electrodes and nanoparticle catalysts. The muscles could contract with 500 times the stress-generating capacity of human muscle and could potentially be integrated into human subjects.
The fuel-powered artificial muscles refer to an advance in robotics and engineering by researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas NanoTech Institute and Pusan National University in Korea. The effort was led by Dr. Ray Baughman, with help from DARPA. The creation of the fuel-powered artificial muscles was announced on March 16, 2006, and the next day, the peer-reviewed paper describing the technology was published in the prestigious journal Science.
The fuel-powered artificial muscles are said to be based on nanotechnology because they use carbon nanotube electrodes to convert chemical energy into mechanical energy and employ nanoparticle catalysts. The first attempt at nanotechnology-based fuel-powered artificial muscles was a “cantilevered nanotube fuel cell muscle.” The cantilevered portion contained a strip of nanotubes coated with the ionic polymer Nafion and platinum-coated carbon.
In addition to propelling the muscle, the cantilever was immersed in the electrolytic sulfuric acid and served as the cathode of the fuel cell that powered it. Another electrode separated the electrolyte from the hydrogen fuel. The activated fuel cell caused electron holes to be injected throughout the cantilever, which contracted it through quantum and electrostatic effects. The resulting fuel-powered artificial muscle was relatively weak, but interesting from an experimental point of view.
The next attempt would involve the fuel-powered artificial muscle that would make the team world-famous. The new muscle incorporated a memory wire coated with platinum catalyst nanoparticles and achieved activation by producing a constant short circuit, causing it to heat up and bend. The resulting fuel-powered artificial muscle could run on methanol vapor, hydrogen, or formic acid vapor and contract with 500 times the stress-generating capacity of human muscle. Because it could contract only 5%, or about four times less than human muscle, it was said to have about 100 times human muscle capacity.
A robot built with this fuel-powered artificial muscle could toss heavy electric batteries in favor of chemical fuels, which carry higher energy per unit of weight. The team even went so far as to suggest integrating future variants into human subjects by eliminating platinum catalysts for enzymes that can tap into energy sources in the human bloodstream. This could lead to cyborgs 100 times stronger than conventional humans.
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