Nacre-based carbon nanomeshes for a soft ionic actuator with large and rapid deformation

Hierarchically porous carbon nanomeshes from nacre for fast ion penetration of soft ionic actuator with large and rapid deformation.

Hardware and Software Development for Isotonic Strain and Isometric Stress Measurements of Linear Ionic Actuators

An inseparable part of ionic actuator characterization is a set of adequate measurement devices. Due to significant limitations of available commercial systems, in-house setups are often employed. The main objective of this work was to develop a software solution for running isotonic and isometric experiments on a hardware setup consisting of a potentiostat, a linear displacement actuator, a force sensor, and a voltmeter for measuring the force signal. A set of functions, hardware drivers, and measurement automation algorithms were developed in the National Instruments LabVIEW 2015 system. The result is a software called isotonic (displacement) and isometric (force) electro-chemo-measurement software (IIECMS), that enables the user to control isotonic and isometric experiments over a single compact graphical user interface. The linear ionic actuators chosen as sample systems included different materials with different force and displacement characteristics, namely free-standing polypyrrole films doped with dodecylbenzene sulfonate (PPy/DBS) and multiwall carbon nanotube/carbide-derived carbon (MWCNT-CDC) fibers. The developed software was thoroughly tested with numerous test samples of linear ionic actuators, meaning over 200 h of experimenting time where over 90% of the time the software handled the experiment process autonomously. The uncertainty of isotonic measurements was estimated to be 0.6 µm (0.06%). With the integrated correction algorithms, samples with as low as 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be adequately described.

Investigation of a Biocompatible Artificial Muscle Based on Different Electrolyte Additive

Recently, ionic actuator as a kind of artificial muscle has attracted great attentions according to their remarkable strain under low-voltage stimulation. Here, we investigated a biocompatible ionic polymer actuator, which consists of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MCNTs) film as the double electrode layer and an electrolyte layer equipped with a chitosan polymer skeleton. As a result, we found it presented various electromechanical properties under the preparation factors of the different additive glycerol (0mL, 2mL, 4mL). The actuators with 2mL glycerol behaved a longer life bending (65 times), which was obviously surpassed by the others. Also, based on strain and stress testing, Young's modulus of the electrolyte presented a decreasing trend. In fact, the improvement was mainly due to the weakened inter-molecular hydrogen and the rotation molecular of the electrolyte film. Results show the additive inside the electrolyte is very effective to improve the performance of artificial muscle.

Fabrication of Bionic Linear Actuator and Application Study Based on 3D Printing

In this manuscript, a bionic linear actuator was developed base on the ionic actuator: ionicpolymer metal composites, and the mainly fabrication method was presented in the currentinvestigation. Subsequently, a bionic robot was developed using 3D printing technique to fabricatethe skeleton structure and the presented Bi-IPMC(assembled by two segmented IPMC strip) linearactuator as the driving power. After a mathematical model of bionic robot, a experimented bionicrobot was manufactured to investigate. The results founded that our bionic robot behaved a maximumbounce height arrived at 22mm under applied 5V direct current, and the bounce height can keep onthe values of 18mm over the applied voltage of 4V.

Synergistic effect of a r-GO/PANI nanocomposite electrode based air working ionic actuator with a large actuation stroke and long-term durability

Ar-GO/PANI nanocomposite based air working ionic actuator demonstrates a large actuation stroke and long-term durability.