Slashdot Mirror
Nanotech Research Works Toward Artificial Muscles
An anonymous reader writes "Nanotech researchers are developing artificial muscles that convert chemical energy to mechanical energy. This ambitious project aims at making an artificial muscles from conducting polymers and carbon nanotubes that are chemically powered, like natural muscles, and exceed the force generation, contraction and speed of their natural counterpart. This work will lead to advanced limbs for amputees and robots."
Jerry http://www.syslog.org/
Not just the lubrication: bone is a living material. But still ... electric motors with sealed oillite bearings operate for decades without maintenance. Of course, they don't have to withstand the tremendous peak forces that articulated joints do.
I suspect there are probably a number of materials that would serve reliably in a replacement joint if they didn't have to function within the human body. Tissue rejection is a major issue, and that limits what you can put in there. Plus which human tissue is hardly chemically neutral, so I suppose you'd have to worry about corrosive effects as well. Titanium is used a lot (my Dad's pacemaker was made of the stuff) and is one of the few substances that isn't affected much by the environment of the body and doesn't trigger an autoimmune reaction. Or so his doctor told me.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Muscles do contract lengthwise but the force at the molecular level is driven by a lever arm, namley myosin. As such, all of the muscle filaments stay the same length and do not contract merely "slide" over each other.
rnadom txet for a sngrutaie