Polyelectrolyte gels can present a large deformation induced by environmental temperature, electric field and chemicals, which maintain great potentials in soft actuator, environmental sensor, drug delivery, etc. In this paper, the coupling mechanism of reaction kinetics, deformation of polymer network, mass diffusion and polyelectrolyte effect in the gels will be uncovered, and a general dynamic electro-chemo-mechanical model will be proposed for common polyelectrolyte gels. Further investigations showed that the dynamic deformation and response time of a polyelectrolyte gel are dependent on the concentration of reactive and non-reactive ions, the time of exposure to external stimuli, the initial state and the density of ion-izable groups on the polymer chains.
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