High performance fiber-constrained plasticized PVC gel actuators for soft robotics

Plasticized Poly (vinyl chloride) (PVC) gel actuators, a type of electroactive soft actuator, have recently attracted increasing interest in soft robotics. Herein, we report a novel planar PVC gel actuator with flexible electrodes and a fiber-constrained structure for electroactive artificial muscles. PET adhesive fibers were evenly affixed on both sides of the unidirectional pre-stretched PVC gel membranes in one direction, resulting in a human-muscle-like unidirectional contraction and expansion movement. The fibers can constrain the bending motion of the PVC gel membranes, and the unidirectional pre-stretch in the direction of the attached fibers further makes the membrane anisotropic, leading to easy and fast actuation in the direction normal to the pre-stretch. The developed fiber-constrained plasticized PVC gel actuator (FCPPGA) unit exhibited high strain (>40%) and stress (>0.5 MPa) with a fast response time of about 0.1 s under a relatively low driving DC field (<15 V/μm). The simulated data were in good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, the designed FCPPGA was successfully used to demonstrate the mimicry of lower jaw motions in a skeleton model.