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Electroresponsive devices have attended significant interest for actuators and artificial muscles in recent days but are susceptible to low deformation at applied voltages. To address this problem, herein, we have prepared novel flexible composite gel based on polyvinyl chloride (PVC), dibutyl adipate (DBA), and functionalized reduced graphene oxide (f‐rGO) via solution casting technique. The structural, morphological, optical, mechanical, and thermal properties of the composite PVC/f‐rGO gel were characterized by using various techniques. In order to test the usefulness of PVC/f‐rGO, we fabricated the new planar PVC/f‐rGO‐based gel actuator, by holding the gel between two electrodes. Stimuli‐responsive deformation of ~2.7 mm was measured at a voltage of 1200 V for an optimized gel in the designed device. The loading of silane‐f‐rGO greatly enhanced the stimulation, response time and flexibility of the PVC gel. The highest elongation at break of about 433% was achieved for f‐rGO‐loaded PVC gel owing to strong dipole–diploe interactions between alpha hydrogen of PVC and ‐NH2 of f‐rGO. We believe that highly electro‐stimulated, soft and, flexible PVC/f‐rGO gels could open a new avenue for the fabrication of advanced artificial muscles and tunable soft actuators for number of applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stimulated devices are highly demanded for actuators and artificial muscles in the recent era but susceptible to low deformation at an applied voltage. In the present work, ionic liquids (ILs) based gel films were prepared from the polyvinyl chloride (PVC), dibutyl adipate (DBA), 1‐butyl, 3‐methimidazolium chloride, and 1‐pentyl‐3‐methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate by a simple solvent evaporation method. The structural, morphological, optical, and mechanical properties of the composite PVC/ILs gel were characterized by Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Large Angle X‐ray scattering (LAXS), UV–visible (UV–vis) absorption spectroscopy, scanning electron micrpscopy (SEM) and elemental mapping. We found that the displacement of plasticized PVC gels‐based actuator was 0.1 mm with the response time of 0.33 s at an induced voltage of 1000 V. The loading of 0.02% of IL (fluorides) with PVC gel showed maximum deformation of 0.16 mm with a relatively rapid response time of 0.2 s. These high deformation and response time values of IL fluoride‐based gels are dramatically higher than reported PVC gels. Likewise, the loading of IL fluorides in the PVC gel showed a high elongation value at the break of about 377%. This work suggests that the flexible gel based on IL fluorides and PVC could be a potential candidate for the fabrication of high‐performance artificial muscles and tunable soft actuators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Electro‐active polymers (EAPs) such as P(VDF‐TrFE‐CTFE) are greatly promising in the field of flexible sensors and actuators, but their low dielectric strength driven by ionic conductivity is a main concern for achieving high electrostrictive performance. It is well known that there is a quadratic dependence of the strain response and mechanical energy density on the applied electric field. This dependence highlights the importance of improving the electrical breakdown EAPs while reducing the dielectric losses. This article demonstrates that it is possible to dramatically increase the electrical breakdown and decrease the dielectric losses by controlling processing parameters of the polymer synthesis and fabrication procedure. As a result, an enhancement of around 70% is achieved in both the strain and blocking force. The effects on the dielectric losses of the polymer crystallinity, molecular weight, solvent purity, and crystallization temperature are also investigated. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2018, 56, 1164–1173 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]