High performance, flexible and renewable nano-biocomposite artificial muscle based on mesoporous cellulose/ ionic liquid electrolyte membrane

Abstract A flexible nano-biocomposite artificial muscle based on a mesoporous renewable cellulose/ionic liquid (IL-Cel) electrolyte membrane with high porosity of 91.31% was developed in this paper. The IL-Cel electrolyte membrane, fabricated by a solution-phase separation process, exhibited absolute advantages in flexibility and ion transfer efficiency, so IL-Cel regenerated actuators exhibited significant enhancement in the deflection displacement and force, which were 4 and 2 times greater than traditional DMAC/Li-dissolved cellulose (Dm-Cel)-based actuators. Good flexibility (from the tensile test) and low surface resistance (within 100 Ω, from SEM) were also attained by actuators composed of an IL-Cel electrolyte membrane without regenerated substances (from FT-IR and XRD). Actuators with a solid-state electric double layer capacitor using multi-wall carbon nanotubes as electrodes and [Emim]Ac-Cel as the polymer electrolyte, exhibited the highest specific capacitance of 890 mF g −1 at 20 mV s −1 , a lower internal resistance (0.098 Ω g −1 ) at range of 10 5 Hz–0.01 Hz, and the lowest power density (149 W kg −1 ) at 10 A g −1 . Results indicated that cathode deflection was achieved by the action of van der Waals force and anion volumetric strain. These findings suggest that the developed mesoporous IL-Cel based actuators hold great promise in the further study of high-performance actuators.