Stretchable pumps for soft machines

Abstract

Machines made of soft materials bridge life sciences and engineering¹. Advances in soft materials have led to skin-like sensors and muscle-like actuators for soft robots and wearable devices^1-3. Flexible or stretchable counterparts of most key mechatronic components have been developed^4,5, principally using fluidically driven systems^6-8; other reported mechanisms include electrostatic^9-12, stimuli-responsive gels^13,14 and thermally responsive materials such as liquid metals^15-17 and shape-memory polymers¹⁸. Despite the widespread use of fluidic actuation, there have been few soft counterparts of pumps or compressors, limiting the portability and autonomy of soft machines^4,8. Here we describe a class of soft-matter bidirectional pumps based on charge-injection electrohydrodynamics¹⁹. These solid-state pumps are flexible, stretchable, modular, scalable, quiet and rapid. By integrating the pump into a glove, we demonstrate wearable active thermal management. Embedding the pump in an inflatable structure produces a self-contained fluidic 'muscle'. The stretchable pumps have potential uses in wearable laboratory-on-a-chip and microfluidic sensors, thermally active clothing and autonomous soft robots.