Ecofriendly electroactive polymer actuator using highly porous carboxylated bacterial cellulose

Abstract

Ecofriendly high-performance electroactive polymer actuators have received great attention due to their applications in human friendly electronics such as soft haptic devices, wearable electronics, and biomedical robots. Here, we report an ecofriendly electroactive soft actuator based on porous carboxylated bacterial cellulose (CBC) membrane, thereby realizing large bending deformation, fast response, and excellent durability in open air environment. The porous CBC membrane was fabricated using the facile zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles particulate leaching (PL) method. The porous CBC actuator showed high actuation performances because of the enhanced electrochemical properties of CBC membranes. The developed CBC actuator can be a promising candidate for human-related bioengineering as well as biomedical active devices and biomimetic robots.