Abstract
To comply with green chemistry and achieve sustainable development, an electrically-actuated membrane and two non-metallic electrode membranes were assembled into a muscle-like biomass hydrogel paper actuator (BHPA), with a ‘sandwich-like’ structure. This has great potential in engineering applications, attributable to its excellent characteristics such as light weight, low driving voltage and good flexibility. The contact resistance between every two membranes of the BHPA is the core factor in enhancing its output force characteristics and tremor behavior. Based on the orthogonal experiment and control variates, and under the excitation of an electric field, this study investigates the impact and mechanism of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-sodium alginate (SA) based sol–gel coating and its thickness on the electrically-actuated performance of the BHPA. The results obtained were compared with that of the BHPA samples assembled by conventional hot laminating technology. Furthermore, with an equivalent circuit model, the preliminary quantitative relationship between peak current and contact resistance of the BHPA was derived by a mathematical expression. The results demonstrated that the optimum dimension and testing voltage of the BHPA were 35 mm × 8 mm × 1 layer (0.352 mm) and 4 V, where its output force density and service life both reached the maximum values of 13.34 mN/g and 330 s, respectively, with the lightest tremor behavior. Moreover, the internal resistance and elastic modulus of the BHPA achieved the minimum values of 2.13 Ω and 3.1 MPa, respectively, and its specific capacitance acquired the maximum value of 81.3 mF/g under the sol–gel with a thickness of 1 coating. It is of great value to modify the interface properties of the BHPA for actuation enhancement in demanding working settings.
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This study was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province (Grant Number YDZJ202201ZYTS393).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by JY, TY, JY, SW and KW. The first draft of the manuscript was written by JY and TY, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Yang, J., Yu, T., Yao, J. et al. Application of MWCNT-SA based sol–gel coatings to enhance the electrically-actuated performance of biomass hydrogel paper actuators. Cellulose 30, 1741–1757 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04992-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04992-x