Research Of Novel Contactless Flexible Electrostatic Actuator Based On Carbon Nanomaterials

Traditional rigid robots have poor environmental adaptability and less flexible,which are difficult to achieve flexible movements in restricted space or complex terrain due to their own complex rigid structure.With the research and innovation of new flexible intelligent materials,soft robots composed of flexible materials with good flexibility and environmental adaptability have gradually become a research hotspot,so they are more suitable for realizing complex continuous motion in unstructured and narrow environments.The flexible intelligent actuator is one of the important core components of the soft robot,it can respond to a variety of external stimuli such as electricity,light,chemicals and produce mechanical deformation output,thus helping to realize the lightweight and miniaturization of the robot.Nevertheless,the current manufacturing process of the actuator is complex,and the actuator has the shortcomings such as small deformation,slow response speed,single-modal locomotion and poor manoeuvrability,which are the issues that need to be addressed in the development of flexible intelligent actuator.Aiming at the main problems of flexible actuators,this thesis focused on the preparation of flexible drive materials and actuators,electrostatic driving performance of the actuator and the untethered soft micro-robots with multimodal locomotion.In this paper,we produced flexible monolayer film electrostatic actuators based on graphene,carbon nanotubes and black phosphorus materials by a simple and versatile fabrication technique.The electrostatic actuators can be easily driven by electrostatic forces due to contact electrification and electrostatic induction.Next,based on these electrostatic actuators,flexible bionic robots with continuous self-sustained oscillation and untethered soft robot with multimodal locomotion driven by electrostatic forces have been successfully developed.The main research results are as follows: 1)Reduced graphene oxide(RGO)thin films were prepared by vacuum filtration and chemical reduction;RGO monolayer flexible actuators were prepared by the simple geometric design,and the obtained actuators have excellent electrostatic driving performance;a flexible bionic robot was designed based on RGO thin film actuators to generate continuous selfsustained oscillation in a constant electrostatic field,and the obtained RGO flexible bionic robot can achieve fast linear and circular movements.2)Black phosphorus/carbon nanotubes(BP-CNTs)composite films were prepared by in-situ growth and chemical passivation;the obtained BP-CNTs composite films were able to produce fast mechanical response and large reversible bending deformation under the stimulation of external electrostatic force;the actuation performance of BP-CNTs composite films in changing electrostatic fields was investigated,the electrostatic driving mechanism and the ambipolar behavior which can be attracted or repelled by homogeneous charges of BP-CNTs composite films were explained.mechanism and the bipolar behavior of BP-CNTs composite films attracted or repelled by homogeneous charges are explained.3)An untethered ring-shaped flexible robot has been designed and prepared based on the BP-CNTs composite film.The resulted robot has excellent flexibility,manoeuvrability and environmental adaptability and can achieve multi-modal locomotion such as climbing,steering and jumping in an electrostatic field.This paper investigates the driving performance of flexible actuators based on graphene,carbon nanotubes and black phosphorus in electrostatic fields.The resulted robot can achieve continuous self-oscillation and multimodal locomotion in electrostatic field,which providing a new idea for the research and development of untethered soft robots in the future.