Ionic liquids enhanced performance of PVC gels actuator

Stimulated devices are highly demanded for actuators and artificial muscles in the recent era but susceptible to low deformation at an applied voltage. In the present work, ionic liquids (ILs) based gel films were prepared from the polyvinyl chloride (PVC), dibutyl adipate (DBA), 1‐butyl, 3‐methimidazolium chloride, and 1‐pentyl‐3‐methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate by a simple solvent evaporation method. The structural, morphological, optical, and mechanical properties of the composite PVC/ILs gel were characterized by Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Large Angle X‐ray scattering (LAXS), UV–visible (UV–vis) absorption spectroscopy, scanning electron micrpscopy (SEM) and elemental mapping. We found that the displacement of plasticized PVC gels‐based actuator was 0.1 mm with the response time of 0.33 s at an induced voltage of 1000 V. The loading of 0.02% of IL (fluorides) with PVC gel showed maximum deformation of 0.16 mm with a relatively rapid response time of 0.2 s. These high deformation and response time values of IL fluoride‐based gels are dramatically higher than reported PVC gels. Likewise, the loading of IL fluorides in the PVC gel showed a high elongation value at the break of about 377%. This work suggests that the flexible gel based on IL fluorides and PVC could be a potential candidate for the fabrication of high‐performance artificial muscles and tunable soft actuators. Highly electro‐stimulated gels were prepared from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), dibutyl adipate (DBA), 1‐butyl, 3‐methimidazolium chloride, and 1‐pentyl‐3‐methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate. Excellent dispersion of the ionic liquids (ILs) in PVC gel has been identified as one of the primary criteria to achieve high deformation. However, the PVC/IL containing hexafluorophosphate ion act as a better actuator as compared to PVC/IL containing chlorides ion. A novel gel mechanism has been proposed based on physicochemical interactions among PVC, DBA, and, ILs.