Multistimulus Responsive Actuator with GOand Carbon Nanotube/PDMS Bilayer Structure for Flexible and Smart Devices

Abstract: Smart devices with abilities ofperceiving, processing, and responding are attracting more and more attentionsdue to the emerging development of artificial intelligent systems, especiallyin biomimetic and intelligent robotics fields. Designing a smart actuator withhigh flexibility and multistimulation responsive behaviors to simulate themovement of creatures, such as weight lifting, heavy objects carrying viasimple materials, and structural design is highly demanded for the developmentof intelligent systems. Herein, a soft actuator that can produce reversibledeformations under the control of light, thermal, and humidity is fabricated bycombining high photothermal properties of CNT/PDMS layer with the naturalhydrophilic GO layer. Due to the asymmetric double-layer structure, the novelbilayer membrane-based actuator showed different bending directions underphotothermal and humidity stimulations, resulting in bidirectional controllablebending behaviors. In addition, the actuation behaviors can be well controlledby directionally aligning the graphene oxide onto carbon nanotube/PDMS layer.The actuator can be fabricated into a series of complex biomimetic devices,such as, simulated biomimetic fingers, smart “tweezers”, humidity controlswitches, which has great potential applications in flexible robots, artificialmuscles, and optical control medical devices.

Wang Wen, et al. Multistimulus responsiveactuator with GO and carbon nanotube/PDMS bilayer structure for flexible andsmart devices. ACS applied materials & interfaces, 2018, 10, 27215-27223.