Preparation and performance of soft actuator based on IPMC with silver electrodes

Abstract

The surface electrodes of traditional ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMC) are made of platinum. To reduce the production cost, nonprecious metals such as silver is proposed. A new approach of electroless silver plating based on chemical deposition method is adopted, getting two types of IPMCs, Pt-Ag IPMC, and Ag-Ag IPMC. The microscopic analysis, driving abilities tests, and their surface-electrode resistance analysis show that Ag and Pt particles penetrate inside Nafion membrane with gradient distribution throughout the membrane. The maximum electro-active bending deformation angles of the specimens, which are obtained under the same specimen dimension and constrains, are about 60° for Pt-Pt IPMC and Pt-Ag IPMC and 90° for the Ag-Ag IPMC, respectively, corresponding to the driving voltage of 3 V, 4 V, and 1.5 V. The surface-electrode resistance of Ag-Ag IPMC is the lowest and the most stable, which shows that the proposed approach is valid. The experiments show that the IPMC technology based on the silver electrode is feasible.

Keywords

ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMC) / Nafion / intelligent material / soft actuators / electroless silver plating