A stretchable and self-healing ionic artificial muscle modified by conductive substances

In recent years, the application of flexible electronic devices such as soft sensors and soft actuators has been limited, due to issues with their greater electromechanical performance and self-healing ability. Ionic electroactive polymers (iEAPs) have excellent development potential in this field because of its faster response speed and better tensile properties. Here, we proposed a stretchable, self-healing ionic electroactive polymer (PAST-iEAPs), which contains cassava starch to generate many hydrogen bonds in PAST-iEAPs. We introduced a variety of conductive materials for modification. The results showed that the modified PAST-iEAPs had good tensile strength (about 1.45 MPa), and their self-healing efficiency was about 92% after 24 h of self-healing at room temperature. Especially, PAST-iEAPs had an excellent electromechanical performance. Under 10 V DC voltage, the maximum deflection angle (128°) and maximum output force (38.326 mN) were 1.8 times and 2.1 times higher than those without modification. This work illustrated that PAST-iEAPs with low cost, easy preparation, and good biocompatibility have great potential in the research fields of soft robots and biomedical devices.