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Ecofriendly low voltage high-performance ionic artificial muscles based on bacterial cellulose nanofibers reinforced with polyvinyl alcohol

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Abstract

High-performance electroactive ionic artificial muscles have received widespread attention in braille displays, haptic devices, active biomedical devices, and soft robots. Herein, we report a novel low voltage ecofriendly ionic polymer actuator based on bacterial cellulose (BC), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and ionic liquid (IL). The designed BC-IL-PVA actuator exhibited superior actuation performances, such as low driving voltage (< 1.5 V), long bending durability (97% retention for 4 h), and large bending strain (0.29% at sinusoidal waveform of 1.0 V with 0.1 Hz), and wide driving frequency (up to 5 Hz), which were ascribed to the strong crosslinking and ionic interactions of BC nanofibers with PVA and IL. Furthermore, a bionic finger based on the designed actuator was successfully demonstrated for playing music and sliding electronic photos on smart photo screens. Therefore, the proposed BC-IL-PVA ionic actuator will offer a feasible approach for developing high-performance soft actuators, artificial muscles, active medical devices, and soft robots.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51905487) and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LY21E050023, LTY21F030001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, 310018, China

    Fan Wang, Daliang Huang, Yujiao Wu & Donghai Wang

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  1. Fan Wang
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FW: designing experiments, writing-original draft. DH: data curation. YW: analyzing data. DW: writing-review & editing.

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Correspondence to Fan Wang or Donghai Wang.

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Wang, F., Huang, D., Wu, Y. et al. Ecofriendly low voltage high-performance ionic artificial muscles based on bacterial cellulose nanofibers reinforced with polyvinyl alcohol. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 123 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-09648-x

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