Cellulose has been reported as a smart material that can be used as sensors and actuators. The cellulose smart material is termed as Electro-active paper (EAPap), which is made by regenerating cellulose. However, regeneration of cellulose resulted in reduced performance output of actuators at low humidity levels. To solve this drawback, EAPap bending actuators were made by activating wet cellulose films in three different room temperature ionic liquids BMIPF6, BMICL and BMIBF4. Results showed that the actuator performance was dependent on the type of anions in the ionic liquids and it was in the order of BF4¯ > Cl¯ > PF6¯. BMIBF4 activated actuator showed the maximum displacement of 3.8 mm with low electrical power consumption at relatively low humidity level. Also, it found that, although size of PF6¯ anion is larger than BF4¯ anion it showed the low displacement output due to poor adsorption as indicated the FTIR analysis.
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