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 10 5 –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.