Electromechanical Actuation with Controllable Motion Based on a Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube and Natural Biopolymer Composite

Abstract

This paper reports novel electromechanical behavior for a natural biopolymer film due to the incorporation of a conductive carbon nanotube network. Through simple solution blending and casting, high weight fraction single-walled carbon nanotube-chitosan composite films were fabricated and exhibited electromechanical actuation properties with motion controlled by low alternating voltage stimuli in atmospheric conditions. Of particular interest and importance is that the displacement output imitated perfectly the electrical input signal in terms of frequency (<10 Hz) and waveform. Operational reliability was confirmed by stable vibration testing in air for more than 3000 cycles. Proposed electrothermal mechanism considering the alternating current-induced periodic thermal expansion and contraction of the composite film was discussed. The unique actuation performance of the carbon nanotube-biopolymer composite, coupled with ease of fabrication, low driven voltage, tunable vibration, reliable operation, and good biocompatibility, shows great possibility for implementation of dry actuators in artificial muscle and microsystems for biomimetic applications.

From Filter Paper to Functional Actuator by Poly(Ionic Liquid)‐Modified Graphene Oxide

“…Additionally, driven by the desire for material sustainability, it is a tendency to fabricate actuators at least partially from biopolymers or bio-templates. [9,10] For example, Whitesides reported the development of soft pneumatic actuators based on composites consisting of elastomers with embedded papers that are flexible but inextensible. [10] In parallel, porous polymer actuators have emerged as a new design methodology, inspired by the cellular structures found in natural plants, such as conifer cones and ice plants.…”

Three-dimensional carbon Archimedean lattices for high-performance electromechanical actuators

“…In our simulation, the k-point grids in the Brillouin-zone are employed according to the Monkhorst-Pack scheme, where k is the electron wave vector. 9 × 9 × 13, 5 × 5 × 13, 7 × 7 × 9, and 16 × 16 × 6 k-points are used for (4,8 2 ), (3,12 2 ), (6 3 ), and (4 4 ) 3D-Cs, respectively. To obtain optimized atomic configurations of 3D-C ALs, the atomic positions and cell vectors are fully relaxed using the Broyden-Fretcher-Goldfarb-Shanno minimization method [27,28,29,30] until all the HellmannFeynman forces and all components of the stress are less than 5e −4 Ry/a.u.…”

“…For simplicity, we focus on four allotropes of the 3D-C ALs that are found to be stable theoretically, namely (4, 8 2 ), (3, 12 2 ), (6 3 ), and (4 4 ) 3D-Cs. We note that some ALs such as (3 4 , 6) or (3 2 , 4, 3, 4) might not be suitable to be a 3D-C structure because the condition for the sp 3 bonding of carbon atom at each vertex is not satisfied [38]. The details of the crystal structures, including the number of atoms in unit cell, lattice parameters and bond lengths between sp 2 (green atoms) and sp 3 bonded atoms (red atoms), are shown in Table 1 and Fig.…”

Carbon Nanotubes Engineering Assisted by Natural Biopolymers

“…(Xiao, et al 2008) On realized that by replacing gas medium with chitosan that helically wrapped on CNTs, we could obtain an electrothermal stimulated macroscopic composite actuator. The electrothermal actuation performance of chitosan/CNT composite has thus been detailed studied (Hu, et al 2010). Biopolymer chitosan functionalized CNTs uniformly distributed as a network in bulk material reversible actuating polymer matrix in the frequency lower than 10 Hz, which is close to organisms' behaviors.…”