Conducting polymers, due to their property of oxidize and reduce in a reversible way, have largely been studied as adequate materials for constructing actuators. The volume change produced in these processes is used for the stuck of a conducting polymer film on a not-volume-changing layer for the development of artificial muscles. One of the main drawbacks that these multilayer artificial muscles show lies on the fact that they delaminate after several working cycles. In one of our previous works, a simplified, single film, self-supported artificial muscle was developed assembling different polypyrrole structures in the same synthesis process. This produces not only "all-polymeric" but rather "all-conducting-polymer" artificial muscles that are able to move in electrolytic media without showing delamination problems after long cycling times. This new generation of simplified artificial muscles seems to be suitable for biomedical related applications. In the present work, actuator’s basement is explained and design configurations analyzed.
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