Fast and Strong Carbon Nanotube Yarn Artificial Muscles by Electro-osmotic Pump.

Abstract

Previous electrochemically powered yarn muscles cannot be usefully operated between extreme negative and extreme positive potentials, since generated stresses during anion injection and cation injection partially cancel because they are in the same direction. We here report an ionomer-infiltrated hybrid carbon nanotube (CNT) yarn muscle that shows unipolar stress behavior in the sense that stress generation between extreme potentials is additive, resulting in an enhanced stress generation. Moreover, the stress generated by this muscle unexpectedly increases with the potential scan rate, which contradicts the fact that scan-rate-induced stress decreases for neat CNT muscles. It is revealed by the electro-osmotic pump effect that the effective ion size injected into the muscle increases with an increase in the scan rate. We demonstrate an electrochemically powered gel-elastomer-yarn muscle adhesive that generates and delivers muscle-contraction-mimicking stimulation to a target tissue.