Longitudinal size effects on electrical and actuation behaviors of ionic polymer-metal composite

Qingfeng Zhang,Shuang Chen,Ke Xiong,Hongguang Liu

doi:10.1177/16878140211039435

Abstract

The structural characteristics of ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) were analyzed, and the effects of IPMC length ranging from 1 to 5 cm (with a width of 0.5 cm) were evaluated in terms of electrical parameters and actuation behavior. It has been concluded that the electrical parameters of IPMC materials (including capacitance, electrode resistance in thickness-direction, and internal resistance) decrease, and the bending strain of the setpoint increases as the length increases. The simulation of the current response of IPMC to 2 V DC voltage shows that the error between simulated peak current using 1 cm-IPMC parameters and the measured value is 8.23 times higher than that of 5 cm-IPMC. The strain of the set point on 5 cm-IPMC sample is 5.65 times bigger than that of the 1 cm-IPMC sample.

Highlights

When an excitation voltage is applied to the electrodes, the uniformly distributed hydrated cations in the membrane are forced to move toward the cathode, resulting in the Ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) bending toward the anode side.[9,10]
A double-layer capacitor C is formed at the interface of the surface electrode and the electrolyte, electrode resistances Rsa (Rsb) in lengthdirection and R1 in thickness-direction are introduced by the surface electrodes, and an internal resistance R2 is introduced by the electrolyte
The results show a significant dependence of the electrical parameter per unit length (1 cm) with the length of IPMC samples

Summary

Introduction

Ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) is one of the most promising soft smart materials for electromechanical or mechanoelectrical transduction, because of its lightweight, flexibility, noiselessness, structural simplicity, fast response, and a large deformation under a low voltage.[1,2,3,4] The attractive inherent advantages of IPMC make it a wide range of medical and industrial applications in artificial muscles and soft robotic actuators as well as dynamic sensors.[5,6,7,8] The typical structure of IPMC is composed of one ionically conductive electrolyte membrane (e.g. Nafion, Flemion, or Aciplex) plated with a metal (e.g. Platinum, Silver, or Copper) electrode on both sides. Since the late 20th century, a lot of studies have been focused on fabrication, modeling for transduction behaviors, and complicated application of IPMC materials.[5,11] only a few authors studied on the effect of the size on the response of IPMC materials. Yang et al.[13] fabricated IPMCs with various

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Conclusion