Modeling and bonding-free fabrication of flexible fluidic microactuators with a bending motion

Flexible fluidic actuators recently attracted the interest of the microsystem community, especially for soft robotic applications including minimally invasive surgery. These actuators, based on a well-known actuator design where a void is surrounded by an asymmetric elastic structure, can achieve large bending strokes when pressurized. Miniaturized versions of these actuators typically fail due to poor bonding of constituting components, and further, there is little theoretical understanding of these devices. This paper presents a new actuator design which does not require any bonding and provides new insights into the modeling of these actuators. The newly developed production process of the actuators is based on out-of-plane high aspect ratio micromolding, which enables high-throughput bonding-free fabrication. Furthermore, a mathematical model based on Euler-Bernoulli's beam equation with a deformable cross section is developed that shows good agreement with validation experiments on prototypes. These theoretical insights greatly facilitate the design and optimization of flexible bending actuators. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.