Magnetic Polymer Actuators with Self-Sensing Resistive Bending Response Based on Ternary Polymer Composites

Ander García Díez; Nelson Pereira; Carmen R Tubio; Jose Luis Vilas-Vilela; Carlos M Costa; Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez

doi:10.1021/acsaelm.3c00432

Magnetic Polymer Actuators with Self-Sensing Resistive Bending Response Based on Ternary Polymer Composites

ACS Appl Electron Mater. 2023 May 30;5(6):3426-3435. doi: 10.1021/acsaelm.3c00432. eCollection 2023 Jun 27.

Authors

Ander García Díez¹, Nelson Pereira², Carmen R Tubio¹, Jose Luis Vilas-Vilela^{1

3}, Carlos M Costa², Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ BCMaterials, Basque Center for Materials, Applications and Nanostructures, UPV/EHU Science Park, 48940 Leioa, Spain.
² Centre of Physics Universities of Minho and Porto and Laboratory of Physics for Materials and Emergent Technologies, LapMET, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal.
³ Departamento de Química Física, Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU), Apdo. 644, 48080 Bilbao, Spain.
⁴ Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, 48009 Bilbao, Spain.

Abstract

A multifunctional polymer-based composite has been designed based on poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) as polymer matrix and cobalt ferrite (CoFe₂O₄, CFO) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as fillers, allowing to combine magnetic and electrical responses. The composites were prepared by solvent casting with a fixed 20 wt % concentration of CFO and varying the MWCNTs content between 0 and 3 wt %, allowing to tailor the electrical behavior. The morphology, polymer phase, and thermal and magnetic properties are nearly independent of the MWCNT filler content within the polymer matrix. On the other hand, the mechanical and electrical properties strongly depend on the MWCNT content and a maximum d.c. electrical conductivity value of 4 × 10^-4 S·cm^-1 has been obtained for the 20 wt %CFO-3 wt %MWCNT/PVDF sample, which is accompanied by an 11.1 emu·g^-1 magnetization. The suitability of this composite for magnetic actuators with self-sensing strain characteristics is demonstrated with excellent response and reproducibility.