Monolayer graphene oxide as a building block for artificial muscles

The electromechanical actuation of a highly ordered compound of graphene oxide (GO) is shown via ab initio simulations to produce high-performance quantum-mechanical responses, which mimic the behaviour of mammalian skeletal muscle. In addition to large expansive strains (∼10%), this GO compound (asymmetrically unzipped C4O) exhibits large contractive strains of −4.8% upon −0.15 e/C-atom electron injection. Furthermore, as these contractive strains are coupled with equally high stresses (∼100 GPa) and short response times (∼1 ns), we show that this GO material meets all of the functional requirements of an artificial muscle building block.