Effect of anisotropic membrane surface modification of Nafion based Ionic Polymer-metal Composites

In order to enhance the electromechanical characteristics of IPMCs actuators under low voltage, a set of anisotropic membrane surface modification techniques, including roughness along, roughness across and roughness across both directions, is proposed in this paper. Three groups of IPMCs samples based on corresponding roughness direction have been prepared to validate the these surface modification. Experiments have been made to measure the electromechanical characteristics of the samples. The results show that the IPMCs actuator with micro-grooves being across the length of the IPMCs actuator could improve the IPMCs' tip blocking force and deflection, and it exhibits blocking forces by 10% larger than the conventional IPMCs while its displacement is approximately 8% larger. We can conclude that an appropriate anisotropic surface modification could be an effective method to create a preferred bending force and to enhance the bending margin of IPMCs actuators.