High-Fidelity Bioelectronic Muscular Actuator Based on Graphene-Mediated and TEMPO-Oxidized Bacterial Cellulose

Abstract

High-performance electoactive artificial muscles with biofriendly, biodegradable, and biocompatible functionalities have attracted enormous attention in the era of human friendly electronic devices such as wearable electronics, soft haptic devices, and implantable or disposal biomedical devices. Here, a high-fidelity bioelectronic soft actuator is reported based on biofriendly 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl radical-oxidized bacterial cellulose (TOBC), chemically modified graphene, and ionic liquid [EMIM][BF4] as plasticizer, thereby realizing large deformable, faster, biodegradable, air working, and highly durable TOBC-IL-G muscular actuator. Especially, the TOBC-IL-G(0.10 wt%) membrane shows a dramatic increment of the ionic conductivity up to 120%, of specific capacitance up to 95%, of tensile modulus up to 63%, and of tensile strength up to 60%, for TOBC-IL, resulting in 2.3 times larger bending deformation without serious back-relaxation phenomena. The developed high-performance and durable bioelectronic muscular actuator can be a promising candidate for satisfying the tight requirements of human-related bioengineering as well as biomimetic robotics and biomedical active devices.