Ionic Polymer Metal Composites (IPMCs) are soft electroactive polymer materials that bend in response to the voltage stimulus (1 - 4 V). They can be used as actuators or sensors. In this paper, we introduce two new highly-porous carbon materials for assembling high specific area electrodes for IPMC actuators and compare their electromechanical performance with recently reported IPMCs based on RuO₂ electrodes. We synthesize ionic liquid (Emi-Tf) actuators with either Carbide-Derived Carbon (CDC) (derived from TiC) or coconut shell based activated carbon electrodes. The carbon electrodes are applied onto ionic liquid-swollen Nafion membranes using the direct assembly process. Our results show that actuators assembled with CDC electrodes have the greatest peak-to-peak strain output, reaching up to 20.4 mε (equivalent to >2%) at a 2 V actuation signal, exceeding that of the RuO₂ electrodes by more than 100%. The electrodes synthesized from TiC-derived carbon also revealed significantly higher maximum strain rate. The differences between the materials are discussed in terms of molecular interactions and mechanisms upon actuation in the different electrodes.

Date Published: 9 April 2010
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 7642, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2010, 76421D (9 April 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.847518

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7642:
Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2010
Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Editor(s)