K’oeng-foe-tse, bij ons bekend als Confucius, zei regelmatig “Hout…slecht, staal…goed”. Of het onderstaande slappe wel een even stoer-harde reputatie krijgt als staal is afwachten.
-“Machines made of soft materials bridge life sciences and engineering 1. Advances in soft materials have led to skin-like sensors and muscle-like actuators for soft robots and wearable devices 1,2,3. Flexible or stretchable counterparts of most key mechatronic components have been developed 4,5, principally using fluidically driven systems 6,7,8; other reported mechanisms include electrostatic 9,10,11,12, stimuli-responsive gels 13,14 and thermally responsive materials such as liquid metals 15,16,17 and shape-memory polymers 18. Despite the widespread use of fluidic actuation, there have been few soft counterparts of pumps or compressors, limiting the portability and autonomy of soft machines 4,8. Here we describe a class of soft-matter bidirectional pumps based on charge-injection electrohydrodynamics 19. These solid-state pumps are flexible, stretchable, modular, scalable, quiet and rapid.”-
