Biopolymer-based artifi cial muscles are promising candidates for biomedical applications and smart electronic textiles due to their multifaceted advantages like natural abundance, eco-friendliness, cost-effectiveness, easy chemical modifi cation and high electical reactivity. However, the biopolymerbased actuators are showing relatively low actuation performance compared with synthetic electroactive polymers because of inadequate mechanical stiffness, low ionic conductivity and ionic exchange capacity (IEC), and poor durability over long-term activation. This paper reports a high-performance electro-active nano-biopolymer based on pendent sulfonated chitosan (PSC) and functionalized graphene oxide (GO), exhibiting strong electro-chemomechanical interations with ionic liquid (IL) in open air environment. The proposed GO-PSC-IL nano-biopolymer membrane shows an icnreased tensile strength and ionic exchange capacity of up to 44.8% and 83.1%, respectively, and increased ionic conductivity of over 18 times, resulting in two times larger bending actuation than the pure chitosan actuator under electrical input signals. Eventually, the GO-PSC-IL actuators could show robust and high-performance actuation even at the very low applied voltages that are required in realistic applications.nano-biopolymer actuator that shows very large bending deformations under low input voltages in a dry environment. Scheme 1 . Schematic illustration for pendent sulfonated chitosan and graphene oxide-pendent sulfonated chitosan-ionic liquid (GO-PSC-IL) nano-biopolymer actuator.

Next generation electronic products, such as wearable electronics, flexible displays, and smart mobile phones, will require the use of unprecedented electroactive soft actuators for haptic and stimuli‐responsive devices and space‐saving bio‐mimetic actuation. Here, a bio‐inspired all‐organic soft actuator with a π–π stacked and 3D ionic networked membrane based on naphthalene‐tetracarboxylic dianhydride (Ntda) and sulfonated polyimide block copolymers (SPI) is presented, utilizing an ultra‐fast solution process. The π–π stacked and self‐assembled 3D ionic networked membrane with continuous and interconnected ion transport nanochannels is synthesized by introducing simple and strong atomic level regio‐specific interactions of hydrophilic and hydrophobic SPI co‐blocks with cations and anions in the ionic liquid. Furthermore, a facile and ultrafast all‐solution process involving solvent blending, dry casting, and solvent dropping is developed to produce electro‐active soft actuators with highly conductive polyethylenedioxythiophene (PEDOT):polystyrenesulfonate (PSS) electrodes. Ionic conductivity and ion exchange capacity of the π–π stacked Ntda‐SPI membrane can be increased up to 3.1 times and 3.4 times of conventional SPI, respectively, resulting in a 3.2 times larger bending actuation. The developed bio‐inspired soft actuator is a good candidate for satisfying the tight requirements of next generation soft electronic devices due to its key benefits such as low operating voltage and comparatively large strains, as well as quick response and facile processability.

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A family of ladder-type p-excessive conjugated monomer (dicyclopentathienocarbazole (DCPTCz)) integrating the structural components of carbazole and thiophene into a single molecular entity is synthesized and polymerized by oxidative coupling to yield poly(dicyclopentathienocarbazole) (PDCPTCz). Moreover, through the careful selection of 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole unit as a p-deficient building block, the dicyclopentathienocarbazole-based donor-acceptor copolymer (poly(dicyclopentathienocarbazole-alt-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole) (PDCPTCz-BT)) is prepared by Suzuki polycondensation. The optical, electrochemical, and field-effect charge transport properties of the resulting polymers (PDCPTCz and PDCPTCz-BT) are not only characterized in detail but also their bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) solar cell in combination with PC 71 BM are evaluated. The values of field-effect mobility (m) for PDCPTCz and PDCPTCz-BT are 8.7 Â 10 À6 cm 2 V À1 s À1 and 2.7 Â 10 À4 cm 2 V À1 s À1 , respectively. A power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 1.57% is achieved on the PDCPTCz-BT/PC 71 BM device, implying that the push-pull copolymers based on ladder-type dicyclopentathienocarbazole as an electron-donating moiety are promising for organic electronic devices.

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