High-performance cellulose based nanocomposite soft actuators with porous high-conductivity electrode doped by graphene-coated carbon nanosheet

A nanocomposite soft actuator based on porous high-conductivity electrode membrane, which was composed of biopolymer cellulose mixed with chitosan and highly conductive nanoparticles generated by reduced graphene oxide encapsulated multi-walled carbon nanotube, was developed in this paper. No new substance was discovered in the regenerated electrode layer through the scanning analysis from FT-IR and XRD. Actuators exhibited significant enhancement in peak to peak displacement, which was 3.64 times increased than the traditional value at 5 V 0.1 Hz. With the test of solid-state electric double layer capacitor, actuators showed the highest specific capacitance (10.695 F g⁻¹) at the current density of 1 A g⁻¹, the lowest internal resistance (9.2 Ω g⁻¹) in the frequency range of 10⁵–10⁻² Hz, and the lowest energy density (901 Wh kg⁻¹) at the current density of 10 A g⁻¹, which demonstrated the absolute advantages in the conductivity and channels for electrons. These findings suggest that research on porous high-conductivity electrode layer holds great promise in the further study of higher performance actuators.