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Highly electro‐responsive composite gel based on functionally tuned graphene filled polyvinyl chloride
Author(s) -
Ali Imdad,
Ali Ahsan,
Ali Ahmed,
Ramzan Muhammad,
Hussain Khalid,
Xudong Li,
Jin Zhan,
Titton Dias Otavio Augusto,
Weimin Yang,
Haoyi Li,
Liyan Zhang,
Sain Mohini
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
polymers for advanced technologies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.61
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1099-1581
pISSN - 1042-7147
DOI - 10.1002/pat.5376
Subject(s) - materials science , polyvinyl chloride , graphene , composite number , composite material , adipate , artificial muscle , elongation , oxide , polyvinyl butyral , chemical engineering , actuator , nanotechnology , ultimate tensile strength , engineering , metallurgy , electrical engineering
Electroresponsive devices have attended significant interest for actuators and artificial muscles in recent days but are susceptible to low deformation at applied voltages. To address this problem, herein, we have prepared novel flexible composite gel based on polyvinyl chloride (PVC), dibutyl adipate (DBA), and functionalized reduced graphene oxide (f‐rGO) via solution casting technique. The structural, morphological, optical, mechanical, and thermal properties of the composite PVC/f‐rGO gel were characterized by using various techniques. In order to test the usefulness of PVC/f‐rGO, we fabricated the new planar PVC/f‐rGO‐based gel actuator, by holding the gel between two electrodes. Stimuli‐responsive deformation of ~2.7 mm was measured at a voltage of 1200 V for an optimized gel in the designed device. The loading of silane‐f‐rGO greatly enhanced the stimulation, response time and flexibility of the PVC gel. The highest elongation at break of about 433% was achieved for f‐rGO‐loaded PVC gel owing to strong dipole–diploe interactions between alpha hydrogen of PVC and ‐NH 2 of f‐rGO. We believe that highly electro‐stimulated, soft and, flexible PVC/f‐rGO gels could open a new avenue for the fabrication of advanced artificial muscles and tunable soft actuators for number of applications.