Empa is working on 3D-printed muscles

(CONNECT) A team from the Laboratory for Functional Polymers at Empa has developed a method that can be used to produce soft, elastic and strong structures in equal measure using 3D printing. According to a report by Empa, they could one day be used in medicine, for example. This is because the new process can be used to print not only complex shapes, but also long elastic fibers. "If we make them a little thinner, we can get pretty close to how real muscle fibers work," Dorina Opris is quoted as saying. The head of the research group even believes that it might one day be possible to print an entire heart from such fibers.

But these structures could also be used anywhere else where things need to move at the touch of a button, for example in cars and machines, or in robots that help people to work and walk. The immediate aim of this project is to develop a glove that makes virtual worlds tangible.

The elastic actuators, which convert electrical impulses into movement, consist of two different silicone-based materials with very different electrical properties. In collaboration with researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Opris and her colleague Patrick Danner have succeeded in reconciling many of the necessary properties. "These properties are often in direct conflict with each other," says Danner, explaining the complexity of the undertaking. "If you optimize one of them, three others change, usually for the worse." ce/mm