Ultralight Nafion/Ag composite microfiber film actuator driven by low voltage

Abstract Electrothermal actuators (ETAs) have received great attention among soft actuators due to their simple structure and light weight. Since most of the application scenarios of ETAs are on soft robots, the current research on ETAs mainly focuses on the improvement of their max deformation. In fact, important application prospects of soft actuators lie in biological and medical aspects, such as smart wearable devices. This remind us to consider the issues of safety and comfort, which have been neglected for a long time. In this work, we report an ultralight, porous Nafion/Ag composite microfiber film actuator prepared by blow-spinning. Unlike most ETAs, it has porous fibrous structure and can achieve considerable deformation in a safe temperature range for the organisms (30 °C–67 °C). The film actuator, with a low density (about 0.45 g cm −3 ), can bend in a short time (within 15 s) to an angle of about 91° and achieve a displacement of 11.2 mm when applied a low voltage (2.4 V). Owing to the processing method of blow-spinning, the film actuator presents a series of excellent characteristics, including softness, light weight and porosity, etc. To summarize, the Nafion/Ag composite microfiber film actuator shows great potential in soft robots and smart wearable devices due to their properties of low driven voltage, low weight and moderate working temperature range.