ABSTRACT
In recent years, several researchers have concentrated their work on electroactive polymers (EAPs) as actuators and sensors, which exhibit a change in shape or size when stimulated by an electric potential. Particularly, among various kinds of EAPs, ionic polymer–metal composites (IPMCs) have received a significant amount of attention due to their large bending deformation under low applied voltage (1–3 V), low density and potential biocompatibility and biodegradability. Mostly, Nafion-117 is employed as the foundation polymer matrix and conducting materials such as platinum and gold are used as electrode materials to fabricate IPMCs. Other materials such as Flemion can also be used as the base polymer for manufacturing IPMCs, but very less research work is carried out using Flemion. In this chapter, the fabrication of IPMC actuators is carried out by taking Nafion-117 as the foundation polymer matrix and silver as the conducting electrode material. Chemical decomposition process is used for the fabrication of IPMC actuators. The deformation responses of the samples are measured at different voltage levels to characterize the bending characteristics of the fabricated Ag-IPMC.
