Abstract
Electro-Active Paper (EAPap) is one of attractive electro-active polymer (EAP) materials for artificial muscles due to its many advantages such as light weight, biologically degradable, low cost, large displacement output, low actuation voltage and low power consumption. However, drawbacks of EAPap actuators include low force output and humidity dependence. To enhance the performance of EAPap, conductive polymer (PPy) and SWNT/conductive polymer (PANI) are coated on EAPap PPy as conductive polymer is coated on cellulose EAPap by means of electrochemical deposition. Two different dopants are used in PPy through conducting polymer processing. SWNTS are mixed with PANI in emeraldine base along with different dopants. The compound materials are coated on cellulose EAPap using spin coating system. The performance of PPy/EAPap and SWNT/PANI/EAPap are evaluated in terms of bending displacement, blocked force, and the effects of dopants, humidity, coaling time, voltage and frequency are investigated. Comparing with EAPap actuators, SWNT/PANI/EAPap actuators show $200\%$ improvement of bending displacement and $300\%$ increment of blocked force.
