Recently, Professor Cheng Guanggui, Professor Ding Jianning, and Associate Researcher Hu Hongwei from the School of Mechanical Engineering published a research paper titled "Artificial Muscles Based on Coiled Conductive Polymer Yarns" in the top-tier journal of functional materials, **Advanced Functional Materials** (Impact Factor: 19).

Lightweight artificial muscles demonstrate broad prospects in fields such as soft robotics, prosthetics, and biomedical devices due to their excellent flexibility, efficiency, and rapid responsiveness. However, current artificial muscles still face challenges, including low strain, low power density, and high costs. This work innovatively develops artificial muscles based on pure conductive polymer coiled yarns, revealing the driving mechanism of high-strength conductive polymer microfibers. The artificial muscles with coiled yarn structures exhibit a contraction strain of over 11% under a high stress of 5 MPa and can bear loads exceeding 4000 times their own weight with only 1V of voltage. Additionally, these artificial muscles possess hydration-induced contraction properties and rapid recovery capabilities, making them a cost-effective alternative to carbon nanotubes and providing a new pathway for the large-scale, low-cost fabrication of artificial muscles.

The research work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52275191) and the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (92248301). Associate Researcher Hu Hongwei is the first author of the paper, while Professor Cheng Guanggui, Professor Ding Jianning, and Professor Lam Yeng Ming from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, serve as co-corresponding authors.

Original article link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.202401685

(Intelligent Flexible Mechatronics Research Institute,

School of Mechanical Engineering)