Re-engineering artificial muscle with microhydraulics

We introduce a new type of actuator, the microhydraulic stepping actuator (MSA), which borrows design and operational concepts from biological muscle and stepper motors. MSAs offer a unique combination of power, efficiency, and scalability not easily achievable on the microscale. The actuator works by integrating surface tension forces produced by electrowetting acting on scaled droplets along the length of a thin ribbon. Like muscle, MSAs have liquid and solid functional components and can displace a large fraction of their length. The 100 μm pitch MSA presented here already has an output power density of over 200 W kg(−1), rivaling the most powerful biological muscles, due to the scaling of surface tension forces, MSA’s power density grows quadratically as its dimensions are reduced.