ORIGINAL PAPER Improvement of the electromechanical performance of carboxymethylcellulose-based actuators by graphene nanoplatelet loading Okan Ozdemir . Ramazan Karakuzu . Mehmet Sarikanat . Yoldas Seki . Emine Akar . Levent Cetin . Ozgun Cem Yilmaz . Kutlay Sever . Ibrahim Sen . Baris Oguz Gurses Received: 11 March 2015 / Accepted: 6 July 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract In this article, the effects of graphene loading (0.1, 0.2, 0.3 wt%) on both the electrome- chanical and mechanical properties of carboxymethyl- cellulose (CMC)-based actuators were investigated. CMC-based graphene-loaded actuators were prepared by using 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide. The synthesized graphene-loaded actuators were charac- terized by Fourier transform infrared, X-ray diffrac- tion analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and tensile tests. Electrome- chanical properties of the actuators were obtained under DC excitation voltages of 1, 3, 5, and 7 V with a laser displacement sensor. According to the obtained results, the ultimate tensile strength of CMC-based actuators containing 0.3 wt% graphene was higher than that of unloaded actuators by approximately 72.8 %. In addition, the Young’s modulus value of the graphene-loaded actuators increased continuously with increasing graphene content. Under a DC exci- tation voltage of 5 V, the maximum tip displacement of 0.2 wt% graphene-loaded actuators increased by about 15 % compared to unloaded actuators. Keywords Electromechanical properties Á Carboxymethylcellulose Á Smart materials Á Mechanical properties Á Graphene Introduction Electroactive polymers (EAPs) have been widely developed for many applications owing to their unique sensing and actuation advantages. Among these O. Ozdemir (&) Á R. Karakuzu Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey e-mail: ozdemir.okan@deu.edu.tr M. Sarikanat Á B. O. Gurses Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey Y. Seki Á E. Akar Department of Chemistry, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey E. Akar Department of Bioengineering, C ¸ anakkale Onsekiz Mart University, C ¸ anakkale, Turkey L. Cetin Department of Mechatronics Engineering, I ˙ zmir Katip C ¸ elebi University, Izmir, Turkey O. C. Yilmaz Department of Mechatronics Engineering, The Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey K. Sever Department of Mechanical Engineering, I ˙ zmir Katip C ¸ elebi University, Izmir, Turkey I. Sen Department of Biocomposites, The Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, I ˙ zmir Katip C ¸ elebi University, Izmir, Turkey 123 Cellulose DOI 10.1007/s10570-015-0702-3