Carbon nanotube coated electro-active paper(EAPap)

초록

Electro-Active Paper (EAPap) has been investigated as an attractive EAP material for artificial muscles due to its many advantages such as lightweight, availability, low cost, large displacement output, low actuation voltage and low power consumption. The EAPap is based on cellulose material, and is shown to involve primarily transport of ions in response to an external electric field. Depending on the electrode material, EAPap has shown actuation displacement in the range of 2-4mm, at a few volts. Drawbacks of EAPap actuators include a low force output and a dependence on humidity. To improve these, a hybrid EAPap actuator is developed by coating single-wall carbon nanotubes (CNT)/ Polyaniline (PANI) with different dopants. CNT is dispersed in 1-Methy-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), and the resulting solution is used as a solvent for PANI and dopants. The CNT/PANI/NMP solution is then cast on the EAPap by spin coating. The coated EAPap is dried in a vacuum oven. Raman spectroscopy, X-Ray diffractometry and SEM tests are taken to confirm that if the compound materials consist of SWNT and PANI with dopants are successfully prepared by ex situ polymerization. The actuation output of the CNT/PANI/EAPap samples is tested in an environmental chamber in terms of free displacement and blocked force. When the SWNT/PANI/Cl- coated hybrid actuator is excited with 7Vp-p, the maximum displacement of 3.1mm and maximum power output of 0.3mW are obtained. The hybrid actuator shows force improvement, and it turns out the improvement of mechanical power output.