TY - JOUR
T1 - Precise Network Polymerized Ionic Liquids for Low-Voltage, Dopant-Free Soft Actuators
AU - Shen, Chengtian
AU - Zhao, Qiujie
AU - Evans, Christopher M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by funding from Facebook and the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This work was carried out in part in the Materials Research Laboratory Central Research Facilities, University of Illinois. The authors acknowledge Prof. Paul V. Braun for helpful discussions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
PY - 2019/2/1
Y1 - 2019/2/1
N2 - Next-generation material applications require electroactive materials for actuation which are light weight, operate at low voltages (<5 V), exhibit cyclability, and are compatible with a range of environments. Here, a class of network polymerized ionic liquid (n-PIL) actuators is reported, synthesized via a facile step growth polymerization, which not only have comparable actuation strains (≈0.9%) to other state-of-the-art ionic polymer systems at ±3 V, but also exhibit 85% performance preservation after 1000 testing cycles and operate with no additives such as solvent or free ionic liquid. Molecular engineering of the n-PILs by controlling crosslinking density and linker polarity leads to an order-of-magnitude increase in tip displacement which provides insights on future materials development.
AB - Next-generation material applications require electroactive materials for actuation which are light weight, operate at low voltages (<5 V), exhibit cyclability, and are compatible with a range of environments. Here, a class of network polymerized ionic liquid (n-PIL) actuators is reported, synthesized via a facile step growth polymerization, which not only have comparable actuation strains (≈0.9%) to other state-of-the-art ionic polymer systems at ±3 V, but also exhibit 85% performance preservation after 1000 testing cycles and operate with no additives such as solvent or free ionic liquid. Molecular engineering of the n-PILs by controlling crosslinking density and linker polarity leads to an order-of-magnitude increase in tip displacement which provides insights on future materials development.
KW - actuator
KW - molecular design
KW - polymerized ionic liquid
KW - structure–performance relationship
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85057984101&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85057984101&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/admt.201800535
DO - 10.1002/admt.201800535
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85057984101
VL - 4
JO - Advanced Materials Technologies
JF - Advanced Materials Technologies
SN - 2365-709X
IS - 2
M1 - 1800535
ER -