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Glycerol‐regulated tough and electroresponsive alginate hydrogels for a muscle‐like biobased polymer actuator with highly sensitive and durable output force
Author(s) -
Yang Junjie,
Wang Zhijie,
Wang Siyong
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.51393
Subject(s) - glycerol , self healing hydrogels , polymer , chemical engineering , materials science , doping , actuator , composite material , polymer chemistry , chemistry , organic chemistry , computer science , optoelectronics , artificial intelligence , engineering
In this work, with glycerol as a moisturizer, effect and enhancement mechanism of glycerol doping content on the responsiveness, force output and tremor behavior of the muscle‐like biobased polymer actuator (MBPA) were intensively investigated. Then its electroresponsive properties were characterized by a set of valid test methods proposed in detail. Experiments revealed that the optimal glycerol doping content was 3 ml, then MBPA had the best force output and responsiveness characteristics of the maximum about 5.78 mN and 0.230 mN/s, respectively, which were 3.5 and 5.5 times larger than that of the undoped MBPA. Besides, at 5 ml glycerol doping content, tremor amplitude and frequency of MBPA on the force output were around 0.7 mN and three, which were correspondingly 0.27 and 0.12 times lower than the maximum. Moreover, enhancement principle of the MBPA was that doping glycerol could make its surface form a thin membrane to retain moisture inside the MBPA with a stable ion migration environment. Because of small molecules, glycerol was able to interpenetrate with sodium alginate, which destroyed the interaction force but promoted the relative sliding capability between its macromolecular chains, with the number of hydrogen bonds and the rotational activation energy reducing.