The Behavior of Ionic Polymer-Metal Composites in a Multi-Layer Configuration

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2-2005

Publication Title

Smart Materials and Structures

Volume

14

Issue

5

First page number:

881

Last page number:

888

Abstract

It has been observed that an ionic polymer–metal composite (IPMC) is both inherently resistive and capacitive. This allows for the material to be modeled using an equivalent RC circuit to describe the charging/discharging behavior associated with the IPMC. Typically, the model includes two resistors and two capacitors, which will primarily account for the effective electrodes on the surface of the IPMC (top and bottom). There will also be a resistor placed between the two RC circuits to account for material between the electrodes and the resistance due to ion migration through the polymer matrix. In this paper we report our recent effort to extend such a model to accommodate a multi-layer IPMC as well as inter-digitated electrodes. As expected, the observed electric characteristics of an IPMC subjected to an electric field are highly non-linear. This is believed to be due primarily to the particle electrodes on the IPMC surface, which is inherently both capacitive and resistive due to particle separation and density. The advantage of using such a model is to realize the capacitive and resistive effects and use them for a multi-layer configuration. We also present typical experimental data.

Keywords

Chemical physics; Devices; Electronics; Metal-filled plastics – Electric properties; Physical chemistry

Disciplines

Biological and Chemical Physics | Engineering | Materials Science and Engineering | Mechanical Engineering | Mechanics of Materials | Metallurgy | Physical Chemistry | Polymer and Organic Materials

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.

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