A peer-reviewed FPInnovations article entitled “Electro-osmotic Actuators from Cellulose Nanocrystals and Nanocomposite Hydrogels” was published in the international multidisciplinary journal ACS Applied Polymer Materials (Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2021).
The article was co-authored by FPInnovations’
Soft actuators are stimuli-responsive soft materials (e.g., polymers and hydrogels) that incur a change in volume in response to an external trigger to perform mechanical work in a specific environment. FPInnovations’ scientists have developed a simple solution-processing method by which cellulose nanocrystals, CNCs, are blended with hydrophilic non-ionic polymers to create ionic electroactive hydrogels. Such electroactive biopolymer hydrogels have potential applications as soft actuators for biomedicine and robotics.
Both free-standing films of bio-sourced CNCs and nanocomposite hydrogels comprising CNCs and hydrophilic polymers have been shown to behave as anionic polymer actuators in response to an electric field. CNCs were incorporated into non-electroresponsive polyacrylamide to yield nanocomposite materials with greater field-induced bending responses and longer lifetimes than pure CNC films. The actuation rate of CNC–polyacrylamide nanocomposite hydrogels in ionic solution can be tuned by the amount of sulfate-bearing CNCs incorporated into the hydrogel and the density of sulfate groups on CNC surfaces to produce vast nanocomposite actuators (9°/s bending speed). This novel development can initiate opportunities for using CNC-based soft actuators in in sensors, microfluidics, robotics, and biomedicine.
For more information: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsapm.1c01530
Source: FPInnovations