BEIJING: The humble onion is proving its strength outside the culinary world, enabling scientists to develop artificial muscles by using gold-plated cells of the vegetable.
Unlike previous artificial muscles, this one, created by a group of researchers from National Taiwan University, can either expand or contract to bend in different directions depending on the driving voltage applied. “The initial goal was to develop an engineered micro-structure in artificial muscles for increasing the actuation deformation (the amount the muscle can bend or stretch when triggered),” said researcher Wen-Pin Shih.
“One day, we found that the onion’s cell structure and its dimensions were similar to what we had been making,” said Shih, who lead the study. The onion epidermis is a thin, translucent layer of blocky cells arranged in a tightly-packed lattice. Shih and his colleagues thought that onion epidermal cells might be a viable candidate for the tricky task of creating a more versatile muscle that could expand or contract while bending.
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