Publication
Arrays of 100μm x 100μm dielectric elastomer actuators to strain the single cells
Related publications (32)
Osmosis-driven stiffening of structured hydrogels
Esther Amstad, Ran Zhao, Alexandra Thoma
Plant cells harness osmotic pressures to stiffen their leaves through strong turgor pressures. Key to this osmosisdriven stiffening is the confinement of liquids within semipermeable membranes that can regulate the transport of water molecules and ions. In ...
Elsevier2024Real-time actuation of a dielectric elastomer actuator neuroprosthesis for facial paralysis
Yves Perriard, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Thomas Guillaume Martinez, Stefania Maria Aliki Konstantinidi, Armando Matthieu Walter, Amine Benouhiba
Facial paralysis is a highly burdening condition, resulting in a patient's inability to move his mimic musculature on one or both sides of his face. This condition compromises the patient's communication and facial expressions, and thus dramatically reduce ...
2023High Permittivity Siloxanes as Promising Materials for Dielectric Elastomer Transducers: From Synthesis to Application
The speed of change in the modern world is impressive. Within the last 50 years, many devices and technologies have significantly transformed their appearance, intrinsic characteristics and improved their performance. Computers have changed from the size o ...
EPFL2022Elastomer-based pneumatic device to measure the mechanical properties of cell monolayers
Everyday life physiological functions such as breathing, muscle contraction, and blood circulation rely on the ability of single cells to organize into higher complexity structures and sustain mechanical deformations. Cell monolayers are the simplest tissu ...
EPFL2019Low voltage fast dielectric elastomer actuators
This thesis contributes to the field of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs). DEAs are electrostatically driven soft actuators that are fast, capable of generating large actuation strains, high forces, and present high power density. A wide range of appli ...
EPFL2019Folded-Tube Soft Pneumatic Actuators for Bending
This article presents a model and experimental results for a new class of bending soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) made from a single section of thin-walled flexible tubing. The actuator is formed by creasing the tubing into fin-like rectangular folds and i ...
MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC2019Large Array of Shape Memory Polymer Actuators for Haptics and Microfluidics
My thesis advances the field of shape memory polymer (SMP) actuators by providing a versatile strategy to arbitrarily reconfigure large arrays of densely packed latching soft actuators. It exploits two key intrinsic characteristics of SMPs, which are their ...
EPFL2018Fabrication and characterization of silicone-based dielectric elastomer actuators for mechanical stimulation of living cells
Herbert Shea, Samuel Rosset, Alexandre Poulin
Cellular biology is a promising field of application for dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) given that large strains are needed but only low forces are required. The development of devices compatible with standard cell culture protocols and equipment is ...
2018Assessing the degradation of compliant electrodes for soft actuators
Herbert Shea, Samuel Rosset, Alexandre Poulin, Christine Anne de Saint-Aubin
We present an automated system to measure the degradation of compliant electrodes used in dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) over millions of cycles. Electrodes for DEAs generally experience biaxial linear strains of more than 10%. The decrease in elect ...
American Institute of Physics2017High-cycle electromechanical aging of dielectric elastomer actuators with carbon-based electrodes
Herbert Shea, Samuel Rosset, Samuel Schlatter, Christine Anne de Saint-Aubin
We present high-cycle aging tests of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs) based on silicone elastomers, reporting on the time-evolution of actuation strain and of electrode resistance over millions of cycles. We compare several types of carbon-based elect ...
Institute of Physics2017