| Carbon Nanotube/Nafion Composites for Biomimetic Artificial Muscle Actuators |
| Se-Jong Lee, Hyun-Woo Yoon, Deuk-Yong Lee1 |
Department of Advanced Materials Engineering, Kyungsang University
1Department of Materials Engineering, Daelim College of Technology |
|
|
|
|
|
| ABSTRACT |
|
Multi-walled carbon nanotube (M-CNT)/Nafion nanocomposites were prepared by solution casting to elucidate the effect of M-CNT addition, from 0 to 7 wt%, on the viscoelastic behavior of the composites. The M-CNT bundles induced by the Nafion polymer were determined to be uniformly distributed for the 1 wt% M-CNT/Nafion nanocomposites. The 1 wt% M-CNT/Nafion composite exhibited the highest blocking stress of 2.3 kPa due to its high elastic modulus of 0.485 GPa. From a dynamic mechanical analysis, the 1 wt% M-CNT had the highest storage and loss moduli compared with the other samples in all frequency and temperature ranges. From the storage modulus data, the M-CNT loaded composites had similar $T_g$ values near $120^{circ}C$. The glass transition temperatures of the M-CNT loaded composites were $120^{circ}C$ (1 wt%), $117^{circ}C$ (3 wt%), $117^{circ}C$ (5 wt%), and $135^{circ}C$ (7 wt%), suggesting that the effect of the M-CNTs on the Nafion film begins at 1 wt%. Thus, it has been concluded that the 1 wt% M-CNT disported composite is attractive for actuator applications. |
| Key words:
Carbon nanotube, Nofion, Nanocomposite, Dynamic mechanical analysis, Actuator |
|
|
|
PDF Links
Full text via DOI
Download Citation 
