Fabrication of ionic polymer-metal composite actuators by dry process and its device properties

Ion conductive polymer is one of the key materials of solid state electrolytes used in various devices such as sensors and actuators of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS). Especially, Nafion®(DuPont) is the most important ion conductive polymer material and is used as Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite (IPMC) actuator. We have developed a novel dry plasma process for the fabrication of electrodes onto Nafion surfaces in our previous study. In this study, we fabricated IPMC actuators with Au, PtPd or Ag electrodes by our method. We found the maximum displacement (9 μm) was observed with the actuator of Au/electrode when the triangular wave (4 V, 200 mHz) was applied. The maximum displacement per unit charge was also observed with the actuator of Au electrode.