PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.
Traditional ionic polymer/conductor network composite (IPCNC) electromechanical actuators exhibit low actuation
speed and efficiency. In order to improve these parameters while still maintaining low voltage operation, we investigated
IPCNC with a range of composite layer (active layer) and middle ionomer layer (passive layer) thicknesses. We show
that it is the slow ion transport in the porous composite electrode layer that limits the actuation speed of IPCNCs. By
reducing the thickness of the composite electrode layers, both the actuation speed and efficiency can be improved.
Moreover, we show that the IPCNC actuator speed and efficiency are intimately related to the morphology of the
composite electrode layer and the conductor network composites fabricated by ionic self-assembled layer-by-layer
(LBL) exhibit higher strain response compared with that from the traditional IPCNC. For example, LBL composites
show very high intrinsic strain of about 7%. Detailed device analysis points out directions of further improvement of
these actuators.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.
The alert did not successfully save. Please try again later.
Sheng Liu, Minren Lin, Yang Liu, Qiming Zhang, Reza Montazami, Vaibhav Jain, James R. Heflin, "Investigating a few key issues of ionomeric polymer conductive network composite electromechanical transducers," Proc. SPIE 7287, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2009, 72870T (6 April 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.815855