Ionic polymer-metal composites actuator driven by the pulse current signal of triboelectric nanogenerator

Ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMCs), a kind of electroactive polymer, have been considered as artificial muscle due to their deformation in response to electrical stimulation. However, the needing of external power supply severely limits IPMC's wide applications. Herein, newly developed energy harvesting technique of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is used to directly drive IPMC, in order to establish a self-powered actuation system. Even though IPMC cannot utilize the voltage signal from TENG, it is possible for IPMC to accumulate the transferred charge from several motion cycles of TENG. Hence, the combined TENG-IPMC system also develops a new approach for utilizing the current signal from TENG as the control signal. Comparing with IPMC under the drive of power source, TENG-IPMC system needs much lower (about 0.1%) transferred charges to achieve the same bending angle than that of DC power. The actuation of TENG-IPMC system can be controlled precisely through the design of TENG, which can be utilized for several intelligent electromechanical applications, including self-powered gripper, tunable laser projector, and soft robotic in liquid. The TENG-IPMC system has many advantages, such as high energy conversion rate, small size, and low cost, which will significantly improve the usability and portability of IPMC.