ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Valveless microliter combustion for densely packed arrays of powerful soft actuators.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Flexible microscale tactile display with liquid-to-gas phase-change actuator array.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2026Article
- Spatiotemporal rendering for dynamic sensation reproduction via electrostatic-enhanced vibro-haptic interface.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2025Article
- Fully Transparent Haptic Interface for High-Resolution Tactile Feedback on Touchscreens.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Chameleon-inspired tunable multi-layered infrared-modulating system via stretchable liquid metal microdroplets in elastomer film.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Soft Electromagnetic Vibrotactile Actuators with Integrated Vibration Amplitude Sensing.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2023Article
- Logic-enabled textiles.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Engineering Liquid-Vapor Phase Transition for Refreshable Haptic Interfaces.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Existing tactile stimulation technologies powered by small actuators offer low-resolution stimuli compared to the enormous mechanoreceptor density of human skin. Arrays of soft pneumatic actuators initially show promise as small-resolution (1- to 3-mm diameter), highly conformable tactile display strategies yet ultimately fail because of their need for valves bulkier than the actuators themselves. In this paper, we demonstrate an array of individually addressable, soft fluidic actuators that operate without electromechanical valves. We achieve this by using microscale combustion and localized thermal flame quenching. Precisely, liquid metal electrodes produce sparks to ignite fuel lean methane-oxygen mixtures in a 5-mm diameter, 2-mm tall silicone cylinder. The exothermic reaction quickly pressurizes the cylinder, displacing a silicone membrane up to 6 mm in under 1 ms. This device has an estimated free-inflation instantaneous stroke power of 3 W. The maximum reported operational frequency of these cylinders is 1.2 kHz with average displacements of ∼100 µm. We demonstrate that, at these small scales, the wall-quenching flame behavior also allows operation of a 3 × 3 array of 3-mm diameter cylinders with 4-mm pitch. Though we primarily present our device as a tactile display technology, it is a platform microactuator technology with application beyond this one.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.