Highly durable, biomimetic electro-active paper actuator based on cellulose polypyrrole-ionic liquid (CPIL) nanocomposite

Cellulose has received much attention as a emerging smart material, named as electro-active paper (EAPap), which can produce a large bending displacement with applied external electrical field. In spite of many advantages over other reported electro active polymers, there are some issues to be addressed: its actuator performance: (i) sensitive to environmental humidity, (ii) humidity dependent displacement output of the actuator and (iii) degradation of performance with time. In present paper, we have successfully developed the highly durable EAPap actuator working at ambient condition with large displacement output. To improve the performance and durability of EAPap, nanoscaled PPy layer into cellulose EAPap was formed by in-situ polymerization technique. Cellulose-PPy-IL nanocomposite based EAPap actuator showed nearly 100% improvement of the actuator performance compared that of pure cellulose based EAPap actuator systems.