Development of Electrically Controlled Elastofluidic Robots and Microfluidic Devices

Development of Electrically Controlled Elastofluidic Robots and Microfluidic Devices

Kevin Nagle

Advisor: Brandon Vogel

 Department of Chemical Engineering

            Soft shelled robotics is a new growing field.  Requiring less power and able to work at lower pressures, soft robotics could replace hard bodied robotics in many applications of chemical, mechanical and even biomedical engineering.  These soft shelled devices are made using an elastomer gel with reinforced fibers.  Two layers of gel of sealed together to create small air tight chambers.  By pumping a fluid, such as air, into these chambers at low pressures, one would cause the chambers to expand.  The fibers control the ways in which the devices bend when the fluid is pumped into the chambers.  If one controls how these chambers expand and contract one could cause one of these robots to move around or even walk.  The combination between the elastic membranes and hydraulics is known as elastofluidics.  These soft shelled elastofluidic devices are known as fiber reinforced elastomers or FRE for short.

            The research goal is to cause this expansion of the gel to be caused be an electrical stimulation rather than the introduction of a fluid through a pump.  This would allow for greater applications of these devices and make the mechanisms that work these devices to be much smaller.  Research has shown that electrical stimulations can cause gels to expand and contract, by putting a controlled voltage through the device we hope to stimulate what occurred by pumping a fluid into one of the devices.  The goal was to inject the gel with the ionic liquid into the silicone casing to create the device.  The electrical stimulation would be conducted by the ionic liquid in order to stimulate the gel. 

            In addition to working on the elastofluidic devices I also did work with microfluidic devices.  Microfluidic devices were sent to the Geisinger Medical Center of Pennsylvania for use in cancer research.  The devices are used by passing drugs or fluids through the channels.  The devices were created using PDMS.  SU-8 was used to create a master silicon wafer in order to leave the print in the PDMS.