LOS ANGELES: A new study by Taiwan scientists has discovered that gold-plated onion cells can be used to make artificial muscles.
The results were achieved by a research team led by Shih Wen-pin, a professor at National Taiwan University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and have been unveiled in Applied Physics Letters, a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published by the American Institute of Physics.
Prior to the study, researchers had been trying to make artificial muscles with various types of polymers that could contract or expand, but found none that could also bend at the same the time, the Los Angeles Times said.
The first onion muscle prototypes were created from the thin, translucent layer of epidermal cells that lie just below the outer skin of an onion, the paper said.
If these cells are freeze-dried, coated in gold and hooked up to an electric current, they will contract or elongate depending on how much voltage is used, the paper said. As the cells contract or elongate, the entire length of cells bends, according to the report.
“Gold electrodes and onion muscles are both biocompatible, so this work could be applied for biomedical manipulations,” Shih was quoted as saying in the LA Times.
