Abstract
The key challenges in the advancement of actuator technologies related to artificial muscles include fast-response time, low operation voltages and durability. Although several researchers have tackled these challenges over the last few decades, no breakthrough has been made. Here we describe a platform for the development of soft actuators that moves a few millimetres under 1 V in air, with a superfast response time of tens of milliseconds. An essential component of this actuator is the single-ion-conducting polymers that contain well-defined ionic domains through the introduction of zwitterions; this achieved an exceptionally high dielectric constant of 76 and a 300-fold enhancement in ionic conductivity. Moreover, the actuator demonstrated long-term durability, with negligible changes in the actuator stroke over 20,000 cycles in air. Owing to its low-power consumption (only 4 mW), we believe that this actuator could pave the way for cutting-edge biomimetic technologies in the future.
Highlights
The key challenges in the advancement of actuator technologies related to artificial muscles include fast-response time, low operation voltages and durability
A promising candidate is the ionic polymer actuators, which is capable of large displacement under low operation voltages of only a few volts[5,6]
The development of high-performance actuators does not appear to be feasible at present, because such actuators have large deficiencies in their displacements compared with the conventional ionic polymer actuators wherein both the cation and anion are moving-as this approach significantly reduces the ion diffusivity[19,20,21]
Summary
The key challenges in the advancement of actuator technologies related to artificial muscles include fast-response time, low operation voltages and durability. We describe a platform for the development of high-performance ionic polymer actuators, which could be used to achieve a superfast response time under low-voltage operating conditions.
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