Synthetic Super Muscles

Artificial protein muscles repair themselves in seconds

Anatoly Glossev, Vesti

Scientists have created a material from proteins that do not exist in nature. It will be possible to make "muscles" and "skin" for robots from it. What is especially pleasant, this substance heals damage on its own in literally seconds.

The achievement is described in a scientific article published in the journal Nature Materials (Pena-Francesch et al., Biosynthetic self-healing materials for soft machines).

Drawing from the press release of Pennsylvania State University Soft robot actors heal themselves – VM.

Many scientific groups around the world are working on creating robots with soft "muscles" and "skin". However, such materials inevitably wear out when such a "muscle" repeatedly contracts and relaxes, and the skin stretches and contracts again. In addition, the "skin", constantly in contact with solid objects, can also be damaged sooner or later.

Living tissues are constantly being updated, so they are not afraid of such adventures. Nevertheless, small injuries are independently healed by the body. But how to endow robots with the ability to regenerate like this?

Scientists from Germany and the USA looked at the solution from wildlife. They took the proteins of squid teeth as a basis. The latter are known for their ability to recover. Using this sample, the researchers constructed artificial proteins that do not exist in nature. For their production, artificial genes were introduced into the DNA of bacteria.

The resulting substance turned out to be very durable. And when a micro-injury does form on it, it is enough to heat it at the site of the "wound" and in a matter of seconds the integrity of the biopolymer is restored.

Figure from the press release of Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Self-healing soft material outsmarts nature – VM.

This makes it favorably different from other self-healing materials (both artificial and living tissues), which require hours or days to recover.

"We were able to reduce the usual 24-hour healing period to one second so that our soft robots based on [artificial] protein could recover on their own," says the first author of the article, Abdon Pena–Francesch from the Institute of Intelligent Systems of the Max Planck Society. – In nature, self-healing takes a long time. In this sense, our technologies are superior to nature."

The new material also has environmental advantages. It is biodegradable (it is still a protein, although artificial). So if the substance gets into the environment, it will not cause significant harm to it. But it is not necessary to throw it into the landfill: a biopolymer that has served its time can be recycled and put back into use.

The disadvantage of the new material is the relatively high cost. The product of advanced technologies will cost much more than standard petroleum plastics.

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