Printing Fabrication of a Bucky Gel Actuator/Sensor and Its Application to Three-Dimensional Patterned Devices

A bucky gel actuator is a novel electro-active polymer (EAP), which is a low-voltage-driven dry soft actuator. In addition, the bucky gel device generates electromotive force when bending and then it can also be used as a sensor. Its device has a bimorph structure with polymer-supported bucky gel electrodes and a polymersupported ionic gel electrolyte. It can be fabricated by layer-by-layer casting to easily form any shape. In this paper, we demonstrate an automatic fabrication method of bucky gel devices based on a printing method. By using a dispensing machine, we construct the printing system and the manual forming process is replaced with automatic printing. We investigate the printing of complicated shapes and three-dimensional electrode patterns through experiments. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and The Robotics Society of Japan, 2010