Article

Evaluation of Dielectric Gel Coating for Encapsulation of Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite (IPMC) Actuators

SENSORS & ACTUATORS A: PHYSICAL

João Carlos Pires ; João Paulo Serrano da ; Paulo José da Costa Branco — 2007

Key information

Authors:

João Carlos Pires (João Carlos Pires Barrambana); João Paulo Serrano da (João Paulo Serrano da Silva); Paulo José da Costa Branco (Paulo José da Costa Branco)

Published in

November 2007

Abstract

Ionic polymer?metal composites (IPMCs) need ionic hydration to operate. Being water the most used solvent, it happens that during the IPMC air operational life it will eventually dry. With the objective of producing an air-operable IPMC actuator, a new encapsulation process using a dielectric gel is proposed in this paper. We describe the encapsulation procedure and a set of experiments that were performed to verify the evolution of electrical and mechanical IPMC characteristics after 1 day, 1 week, and after 20 days of encapsulation. The results show that the encapsulated IPMC remained hydrated and its performance maintained, indicating the potentiality of the dielectric gel as an IPMC encapsulant material.

Publication details

Authors in the community:

Title of the publication container

SENSORS & ACTUATORS A: PHYSICAL

First page or article number

232

Last page

238

Volume

140

Issue

2

Fields of Science and Technology (FOS)

electrical-engineering-electronic-engineering-information-engineering - Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

Publication language (ISO code)

eng - English

Rights type:

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