A Micro-Muscular Break Through � Berkeley Lab News Center

A Micro-Muscular Break Through � Berkeley Lab News Center: ...a micro-sized robotic torsional muscle/motor made from vanadium dioxide that for its size is a thousand times more powerful than a human muscle, able to catapult objects 50 times heavier than itself over a distance five times its length within 60 milliseconds...

Wu and his colleagues fabricated their micro-muscle on a silicon substrate from a long “V-shaped” bimorph ribbon comprised of chromium and vanadium dioxide. When the V-shaped ribbon is released from the substrate it forms a helix consisting of a dual coil that is connected at either end to chromium electrode pads. Heating the dual coil actuates it, turning it into either a micro-catapult, in which an object held in the coil is hurled when the coil is actuated, or a proximity sensor, in which the remote sensing of an object (meaning without touching it) causes a “micro-explosion,” a rapid change in the micro-muscle’s resistance and shape that pushes the object away...

The vanadium dioxide micro-muscles demonstrated reversible  torsional motion over one million cycles with no degradation. They also showed a rotational speed of up to approximately 200,000 rpm, amplitude of 500 to 2,000 degrees per millimeters in length, and an energy power density up to approximately 39 kilowatts/kilogram.