Electromechanical actuation of buckypaper actuator: Material properties and performance relationships

• DOI: 10.1016/j.physleta.2012.02.011
• Publication Date: 2012-02-10T05:09:02Z
• Authors: P.-J. Cottinet; C. Souders; S.-Y. Tsai; R. Liang; B. Wang; C. Zhang
• Keywords: Buckypaper; Carbon nanotube actuators

Abstract Carbon nanotubes can be assembled into macroscopic thin film materials called buckypapers. To incorporate buckypaper actuators into engineering systems, it is of high importance to understand their material property-actuation performance relationships in order to model and predict the behavior of these actuators. The electromechanical actuation of macroscopic buckypaper structures and their actuators, including single and multi-walled carbon nanotube buckypapers and aligned single-walled nanotube buckypapers, were analyzed and compared. From the experimental evidence, this Letter discusses the effects of the fundamental material properties, including Young modulus and electrical double layer properties, on actuation performance of the resultant actuators.