Jul 28, 2023
The DFG-funded Emmy Noether Junior Research Group MEiTNER is entering the next round.
The Emmy Noether Young Investigators Group MEiTNER - "Multifunctional dielectric elastomer electronics for next generation soft robotics" was granted funding for the second funding phase by the DFG at the beginning of June.
The junior research group led by Dr. E.-F. Markus Henke will thus have a total of approximately €1 million in project funding available for its research over the next three years (until 31 May 2026). The group's goal is to revolutionise current robotics. For that we are currently searching for two new employees: link to job advert.
Conventional robots usually consist of heavy and rigid components, such as motors, gearboxes, and linkages, that are made of high-density materials. Although they can perform complex movements and processes, they are typically not able to perform movements similar to those of biological models. Entirely soft robots with animal-like behaviour will open up totally new perspectives and applications. The MEiTNER project will investigate multifunctional dielectric elastomers (DEs), so-called artificial muscles. The aim is to equip these dielectric elastomers with inherent signal-processing capabilities in the form of dielectric elastomer electronics, only made of polymer materials and carbon. This will enable a totally new class of soft electronics, controlling autonomous, entirely soft robots, without the need of conventional, stiff silicon-based controllers.
Novel soft DE-electronics will be integrated onto dielectric elastomer membranes using compliant electrodes with different electrical properties, such as resistance, capacitance and percolation. All these components will consist only of mixtures of polymers and conductive fillers. To validate functionality of developed processes and subcomponents, there will be investigations in advancing soft biomimetic robotics in general to demonstrate the potential of multifunctional DEs. Those robotic structures will be based on compliant mechanical structures, having distributed dielectric sensor-, actuator- and signal-processing nodes embedded throughout their entire structure.
After the successful implementation of the first funding phase, the first two PhD students, Luca Ciarella and Jianan Yi, will submit their dissertation papers in the next few months. In addition, the group can look back on a number of milestones.
Numerous articles have been published in high-ranking scientific journals, 8 student project and final theses have been supervised, 7 international and internship students have been supervised and further projects have been acquired. The junior research group will grow to seven PhD students in the coming months, working on a variety of projects, all using multifunctional dielectric elastomers as fundamental components.
