Artificial muscles – New potential for humans

The biological muscles of mammals are a miracle of nature. It is a collection of muscle bundles made up of muscle fibers 20 to 200 µm in diameter with the main constituent protein. It is present almost everywhere on our body. With a contraction activity of up to 20% and the self-healing ability of muscle fibers to perform billions of work cycles. What’s more, a biological muscle also has an energy conversion efficiency of up to nearly 40%.

An idea that can change the world

With the development of current technology, there is more demand from human muscles in terms of endurance, higher work efficiency, .. and that is something that biological muscles cannot meet. And that’s why Artificial Muscle was thought of, a muscle that is stronger, more flexible, more versatile and smaller in size than natural muscle made from special materials.

The increased demand for health led to this invention.

In 1999, Baughman and his colleagues – pioneers in the field of artificial muscles published a study in the journal Science with the title “Carbon nanotube actuator”, laying the first foundations for the topic. this interesting. It is a hollow cylindrical material that is only a few tens of nanometers wide, but many times stronger than steel and so light that it can float in the air.

Advantages and disadvantages

Although it was introduced quite early, it was not until recently that the material was studied by researchers at Tohoku University (Japan). Research results show that, under ideal conditions, the above carbon tubes can generate a capacity hundreds of times greater than the capacity of biological muscles.

Large mechanical work, high material strength, operating at a small voltage are the outstanding advantages of carbon nanotube materials, but the disadvantage is that their deformation (about 1%) is much smaller than that of carbon nanotubes. deformation of biological muscles (about 20%) and production costs are still high.

Faced with these limitations, scientists have turned their research to two-dimensional materials such as Graphene or Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2), which ensure the same mechanical properties as carbon tubes but with higher deformation and lower cost. cheaper production cost.

Graphene is envisaged as a potential material for creating artificial muscles.

With more than 200 different types of two-dimensional materials discovered and the support of AI, scientists hope to come up with a potential new material for artificial muscles from AI algorithms, bringing the body into the right place. artificial corn and production and medical.