Kiveste Harti, Kiefer Rudolf, Haamer Rain Eric, Anbarjafari Gholamreza, Tamm Tarmo
Intelligent Materials and Systems Lab, Institute of Technology, University of Tartu, Nooruse 1, 50411 Tartu, Estonia.
Conducting Polymers in Composites and Applications Research Group, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam.
Polymers (Basel). 2020 Dec 30;13(1):125. doi: 10.3390/polym13010125.
Ionic electroactive polymer actuators are typically implemented as bending trilayer laminates. While showing high displacements, such designs are not straightforward to implement for useful applications. To enable practical uses in actuators with ionic electroactive polymers, membrane-type film designs can be considered. The significantly lower displacement of the membrane actuators due to the lack of freedom of motion has been the main limiting factor for their application, resulting in just a few works considering such devices. However, bioinspired patterning designs have been shown to significantly increase the freedom of motion of such membranes. In this work, we apply computer simulations to design cutting patterns for increasing the performance of membrane actuators based on polypyrrole doped with dodecylbenzenesulfonate (PPy/DBS) in trilayer arrangements with a polyvinylidene fluoride membrane as the separator. A dedicated custom-designed device was built to consistently measure the response of the membrane actuators, demonstrating significant and pattern-specific enhancements of the response in terms of displacement, exchanged charge and force.
离子电活性聚合物致动器通常被实现为弯曲的三层叠层。虽然这种设计显示出高位移，但对于实际应用来说，实现起来并不简单。为了使离子电活性聚合物在致动器中得到实际应用，可以考虑膜型薄膜设计。由于缺乏运动自由度，膜致动器的位移明显较低，这一直是其应用的主要限制因素，导致考虑此类器件的研究工作较少。然而，受生物启发的图案化设计已被证明能显著增加此类膜的运动自由度。在这项工作中，我们应用计算机模拟来设计切割图案，以提高基于掺杂十二烷基苯磺酸盐的聚吡咯（PPy/DBS）的膜致动器的性能，该致动器采用三层结构，以聚偏二氟乙烯膜作为隔膜。构建了一个专门定制设计的装置，以持续测量膜致动器的响应，结果表明在位移、交换电荷和力方面，响应有显著的、特定于图案的增强。
