%0 Journal Article %T Macroporous smart gel based on pH-sensitive polyacrylic polymer for the development of large size artificial muscle with linear contraction %+ Équipe Microsystèmes électromécaniques (LAAS-MEMS) %A Mansard, Vincent %< avec comité de lecture %Z Rapport LAAS n° 21134 %@ 1744-683X %J Soft Matter %I Royal Society of Chemistry %V 17 %N 42 %P 9644-9652 %8 2021-09-17 %D 2021 %R 10.1039/D1SM01078F %Z Chemical Sciences/Polymers %Z Physics [physics] %Z Physics [physics]/Mechanics [physics]/Fluid mechanics [physics.class-ph] %Z Physics [physics]/Mechanics [physics]/Mechanics of materials [physics.class-ph] %Z Physics [physics]/Condensed Matter [cond-mat]/Soft Condensed Matter [cond-mat.soft]Journal articles %X The physics of soft matter can contribute to the revolution in robotics and medical prostheses.These two fields requires the development of artificial muscles with behavior close to the biologicalmuscle. Today, the artificial muscles rely mostly on active materials, which can deform reversibly.Nevertheless transport kinetic is the major limit for all of these materials. These actuators are onlymade of thin layer of active material and using large thickness dramatically reduces the actuationtime. In this article, we demonstrate that porous material reduces the limit of transport and enablesto use large volume of active material. We synthesis a new active material: a macroporous gel, whichis based on polyacrylic acid. This gel show very large swelling when we increase the pH and themacroporosity dramatically reduces the swelling time of centimetric samples from one day to 100 s.We characterize the mechanical properties and the swelling kinetics of this new materials. Thismaterial is well adapted for soft robotic because of its large swelling ratio (300%) and its capacity toapply a pressure of 150 mbar when swelling. We demonstrate finally that this material can be usedinto a McKibben muscle producing linear contraction, which is particularly adapted for robotics. Themuscle contracts by 9% of its initial length within 100 s—which corresponds to the gel swelling time. %G English %2 https://laas.hal.science/hal-03347477/document %2 https://laas.hal.science/hal-03347477/file/Mansard-Soft.pdf %L hal-03347477 %U https://laas.hal.science/hal-03347477 %~ UNIV-TLSE2 %~ UNIV-TLSE3 %~ CNRS %~ INSA-TOULOUSE %~ LAAS %~ UT1-CAPITOLE %~ LAAS-MICRO-NANO-BIO-TECHNOLOGIES %~ LAAS-MEMS %~ INSA-GROUPE %~ TEST-HALCNRS %~ TOULOUSE-INP %~ UNIV-UT3 %~ UT3-INP %~ UT3-TOULOUSEINP