Printing of self-healable gelatin conductors engineered for improving physical and electrical functions: Exploring potential application in soft actuators and sensors

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Significant efforts have been devoted to developing dielectric elastomer actuators owing to their mechanicalflexibilities, silent operation, and muscle-like performances. However, it still remains a challenge todemonstrate the actuators that maintain function when subjected to damage because most soft materialsconstituting such devices are vulnerable to mechanical stresses during repeated operation. Here, selfhealableelectrodes suitable for dielectric elastomer actuators were prepared from an eco-friendlygelatin-based composite including conductive ions and hydrogen bonds. Electrohydrodynamic printingwas used to reproducibly fabricate a custom-made electrode with desired geometry. The printedgelatin-based electrodes were attached onto elastomers to fabricate dielectric elastomer actuators. Thedevices exhibited good actuator operation and, owing to the self-healing capability of the gelatinbasedelectrodes, almost fully recovered their performances with an efficiency of up to 96.8% even afterthe electrodes were damaged. Furthermore, the potential application of the gelatin-based electrode wasexplored by using them as a strain sensor; this sensor showed a sensitive dependence of electrical resistanceon external joint movements. We believe this work provides a useful guideline for designing selfhealableconductive composites that can be effectively used to make printed actuators and sensorsendowed with good ionic conductivity and useful mechanical properties.

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