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A low normalized voltage-driven and low-working-temperature electrothermal actuator based on reduced graphene oxide/PE composites

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Abstract

Electrothermal actuators (ETAs) are intelligent devices that can produce various movements from thermal expansion induced by Joule heating. In this work, to build a low normalized voltage-driven and low-working-temperature ETA, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) paper with high electrothermal performance and flexibility was adopted as the electrothermal-active materials. The high electrothermal performance of the prepared rGO-60 papers was demonstrated as that a steady-state temperature of 306.1 °C was achieved at a normalized voltage of 2.67 V. Then a bilayer-structured ETA based on rGO-60 and polyethylene (PE) was developed in a simple and mass production possible process. Under a normalized driving voltage of 0.449 V, the prepared rGO-60/PE ETA showed a bending curvature of 2.22 cm−1 at a working temperature of 43.8 °C. Finally, a simple robotic finger prepared by using a single rGO-60/PE ETA was demonstrated to hook the spitball, which is more than 16 times the weight itself. With the advantages of its low-voltage driving, low working temperature and easy to manufacture, the rGO/PE-based electrothermal actuators have a promising application in soft robotics and intelligent systems.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61774084), the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, the special fund of Jiangsu Province for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements (BA2021093), the open project of Key Laboratory of Materials Preparation and Protection for Harsh Environment, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (XCA20013-3), and funding of Jiangsu Innovation Program for Graduate Education (KYCX19_0175).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Technology, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Materials and Technology for Energy Conversion, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, People’s Republic of China

    Yan Yang, Honglie Shen, Zhiyan Yang, Kai Gao, Zehui Wang & Jiale Yang

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  1. Yan Yang
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  2. Honglie Shen
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  3. Zhiyan Yang
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  4. Kai Gao
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  5. Zehui Wang
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  6. Jiale Yang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by YY, HS, ZY, KG, ZW, and JY. The first draft of the manuscript was written by YY, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Honglie Shen.

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Yang, Y., Shen, H., Yang, Z. et al. A low normalized voltage-driven and low-working-temperature electrothermal actuator based on reduced graphene oxide/PE composites. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 33, 22759–22772 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-09043-6

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