High Electromechanical Response of Ionic Polymer Actuators with Controlled-Morphology Aligned Carbon Nanotube/Nafion Nanocomposite Electrodes Citation

Recent advances in fabricating controlled-morphology vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) with ultrahigh volume fraction create unique opportunities for markedly improving the electromechanical performance of ionic polymer conductor network composite (IPCNC) actuators. Continuous paths through inter-VA-CNT channels allow fast ion transport, and high electrical conduction of the aligned CNTs in the composite electrodes lead to fast device actuation speed (>10% strain/second). One critical issue in developing advanced actuator materials is how to suppress the strain that does not contribute to the actuation (unwanted strain) thereby reducing actuation efficiency. Here our experiments demonstrate that the VA-CNTs give an anisotropic elastic response in the composite electrodes, which suppresses the unwanted strain and markedly enhances the actuation strain (>8% strain under 4 volts). The results reported here suggest Correspondence to: Brian L. Wardle, [email protected]; Q. M. Zhang, [email protected]. NIH Public Access Author Manuscript Adv Funct Mater. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 October 8. Published in final edited form as: Adv Funct Mater. 2010 October 8; 20(19): 3266–3271. doi:10.1002/adfm.201000570. N IH PA Athor M anscript N IH PA Athor M anscript N IH PA Athor M anscript pathways for optimizing the electrode morphology in IPCNCs using ultra-high volume fraction VA-CNTs to further enhanced performance.