Influence of Fabrication Process Steps on Pd-IPMC Electrode Morphologies and Mechano-electrical Properties

摘要

The electrode of Ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMCs) is the key to understand their working mechanisms and mechano-electrical properties; however, there is little experimental report on the electrode morphologies and their forming mechanisms. In this paper, several typical IPMC samples with different electrode morphologies are fabricated by combining various process steps. The influence of the process steps, such as roughing treatment, immersing reduction and chemical plating, on the electrode surface and cross-section morphologies is investigated by SEM study, where the reaction principles are employed to explain that how the metal particles generate and grow at different directions of the electrode. The current and deformation responses of the samples are measured at the present of a voltage to characterize the mechano-electrical properties. Then it is concluded that immersing reduction is only suitable as a pre-deposition process step, and chemical plating is necessary for IPMC with desirable performance.