Ethanol Phase Change Actuator Based on Thermally Conductive Material for Fast Cycle Actuation

Abstract

Artificial muscle actuator has been devoted to replicate the function of biological muscles, playing an important part of an emerging field at inter-section of bionic, mechanical, and material disciplines. Most of these artificial muscles possess their own unique functionality and irreplaceability, but also have some disadvantages and shortcomings. Among those, phase change type artificial muscles gain particular attentions, owing to the merits of easy processing, convenient controlling, non-toxic and fast-response. Herein, we prepared a silicon/ethanol/(graphene oxide/gold nanoparticles) composite elastic actuator for soft actuation. The functional properties are discussed in terms of microstructure, mechanical properties, thermal imaging and mechanical actuation characteristics, respectively. The added graphene oxide and Au nanoparticles can effectively accelerate the heating rate of material and improve its mechanical properties, thus increasing the vaporization rate of ethanol, which helps to accelerate the deformation rate and enhance the actuation capability. As part of the study, we also tested the performance of composite elastomers containing different concentrations of graphene oxide to identify GO-15 (15 mg of graphene oxide per 7.2 mL of material) flexible actuators as the best composition with a driving force up to 1.68 N.