多材料打印仿生离子凝胶电池研究

Four-channel microfluidic printhead is presented to print multi-material biomimetic ionic gel battery based on the electric generation mechanism of natural electric eels. Flexible substrates with pre-defined groove array are designed to precisely ensure the shape and relative position of each gel particle in the battery system. The power generation performance of gel battery unit is investigated which indicated that the size of single gel particle has little effect on the output voltage, which linearly increased as the number of gel battery unit increased. A biomimetic ionic gel battery containing 127 gel battery units with gel particle size of 2.0 millimeter were designed and successfully printed in a "S-shaped" sequential connection. The maximum voltage output of the resultant ionic gel battery is measured as 10.15±1.65 Volts, which decreased to 35.6% after 6 hours of continuous discharge. The multi-material printed bionic ion gel battery was successfully utilized to drive the bending of the electroactive IPMC (Ionic polymer-mental composite) actuators. It is envisioned that this exploration might provide an innovative and promising strategy for soft power supply and flexible actuation in such applications as electrically-driven soft robots.