Performance improvement of an ionic polymer-metal composite actuator by using DMSO as solvent

The actual problem of microrobotic is creating of low cost energy-efficient actuator for mobile microsystems, which are able to simulate the movement of biological objects. In this article, designed and fabricated experimental samples of ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) actuators are presented. IPMC actuators are a sandwich structure based on the Naflon-117 membrane (produced by DuPont de Nemours) with platinum electrodes, which were obtained by the chemical reduction process of the salt solution. The methodology for improving this actuator performance by using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as solvent, was proposed and tested. Thus, the substitution water to the mixture of DMSO/H2O (1:1) leads to increases operation time of actuators, impregnated with aqueous solutions.