Self-contained tubular bending actuator driven by conducting polymers

摘要

The low voltage operation and relatively high strain response of conducting polymer actuators has made their use in tubular actuators such as actively steerable catheter tips of interest. Previous work has shown that bending can be achieved by simply coating a commercial catheter with conducting polymer and patterning. However, these actuators require an external electrolyte to operate. This work presents instead a self-contained tubular actuator in which all ion conduction between active polymer layers occurs internally.