AIST REPORT 2012

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A positive climate for partnership and the results of partnership AIST’s mission is to transfer developed technologies to private business and deliver the technologies to society. AIST Kansai was initially founded as the Government Industrial Research Institute, Osaka after the First World War, to establish manufacturing technology in Japan, and was thoroughly grounded in a culture of cooperation with private business. From this background, numerous technologies developed at AIST Kansai have blossomed greatly in society.According to the general director, Takahisa Taguchi, “Three major inventions from AIST Kansai are the carbon fibers that are used in everything from fishing rods to aircraft, the transparent conducting film that are used in liquid crystal displays, and the nickel metal hydride batteries that hybrid cars are equipped with. We are now working on practical applications of a fourth major invention: polymer actuator technology.”Polymer actuators using carbon nanotubes in electrodes, which were developed by research group leader Kinji Asaka, attracted global attention as a highly original technology. Subsequently, international conferences were held organized by AIST Kansai in 2001, 2004, 2006 and 2009, bringing top-level scientists from around the world. Exchanges with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, which oversees more than 80 research units including 60 laboratories in Germany, have helped to drive the research forward.Low-voltage driven, high-performance actuatorsPolymer actuators are essentially a technology made in Japan. Ion conduction polymer actuators were successfully developed at AIST Kansai in 1991. In 2005, the group led by Kinji Asaka developed a bucky gel actuator with a three-layer structure that can be driven in air. This actuator has a structure in which a gel electrolyte constituted of an ionic liquid and a polymer is sandwiched by two electrodes constituted of carbon nanotubes, ionic liquid and a polymer binder.Kinji Asaka describes the characteristics and application potential of bucky gel actuators: “The main characteristic is that the actuator is greatly deformed by low voltages, 3 Volts or less. Polymer materials have excellent workability, which is an advantage for easy fabrication of high-performance actuators. We have made progress in applying the actuators to devices that provide tactile information, such as the development of light, thin Braille displays. Beyond healthcare and welfare, there are potential applications in a wide range of fields, from liquid crystal panels on domestic electronic goods and touch panels on mobile telephones to the robotics industry and the automobile industry.”Huge improvements in performance have been achieved since the actuators were first developed, with generative forces increasing more than tenfold, displacement speeds increasing more than tenfold, and displacement amounts more than doubling. The actuators we have created are known as the fastest driving low-voltage actuators in the world.A rapidly developing and growing Japanese–German partnership The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (Fraunhofer IPA) is counted among the highest-level laboratories in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Fraunhofer IPA encountered the polymer actuators developed by Kinji Asaka at an international nanotechnology exhibition in Tokyo in Japanese–German Partnership Grows from Polymer ActuatorsOpen InnovationResearch Report: “Partnership” Research with AIST (II)AIST and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft are research institutions respectively representing Japan and Germany. We have conducted research exchanges over many years, and have recently made great progress in strengthening our partnership. The trigger for this was polymer actuators developed at our AIST Kansai.ActuatorPhotograph of a three—layer film actuator formed by carbon nanotube and ionic liquid electrodes and an ionic liquid gel deforming when 3 V from two batteries is switched16|Open Innovation

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