Abstract
The exhibition of significantly large bending is a remarkable characteristic of an ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC). However, its inability to generate a high enough force is a major problem in achieving a practical IPMC actuator. The simultaneous enhancement of bending and force generation is needed for broadening the potential of the IPMC actuator as a practical engineering device. Corrosive materials as a flexible electrode of the IPMC is usually not preferred, whereas a noncorrosive material such as platinum is broadly used. Here, we used silver, a corrosive metal, as an IPMC electrode intentionally. The silver electrode exhibits a reversible redox reaction upon an external electric stimulation. That silver redox reaction resulted in the material characteristics change of the IPMC, and it consequently resulted in the simultaneous enhancement of the IPMC bending curvature and blocking force generation. It was further found that the thicker silver coating anchored into the far inside of the IPMC led to the occurrence of a significant silver redox reaction and it altered the material characteristics of the IPMC, consequently turning the IPMC into a greatly deformable and high force generative one.
Highlights
Actuators hold a pivotal place in the automotive industry, aviation industry, precision machinery industry, medical equipment and consumer electronics industry
As to be detailed in Section 5.1.1, we found that L-Naf exhibits both a large bending curvature and a high blocking force generation, and we speculated that the redox reaction of silver coatings on
We propose an idea for an effectively deformable and simultaneously effectively force generative ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC): Achieving the deeper penetration of silver layer into the ion exchange membrane body could result in an IPMC which can exhibit the effective bending and higher force generation
Summary
Actuators hold a pivotal place in the automotive industry, aviation industry, precision machinery industry, medical equipment and consumer electronics industry. IPMC consists of a sheet of ion exchange membrane sandwiched between two flexible metal electrodes This structured IPMC could exhibit a large deformation upon a low voltage [18,19]. Stable and noncorrosive metal is usually preferred as a flexible electrode of IPMC, since the deterioration of the IPMC is unfavorable in every respect Contrary to such a common notion, the active use of the unstable characteristics of IPMC components may be an effective tool for the induction of large bending and it could lead to the high blocking force generation, too. We fabricated both Nafion-based (Nafion is an ion exchange membrane manufactured by DuPont, Milwaukee, WI, USA) and Selemion CMV-based IPMCs bearing silver electrodes and quantitatively evaluated their bending and blocking force generation performance
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