Improving electroactive polymer actuator by tuning ionic liquid concentration

• Bimorph actuators were fabricated with various ratios of ionic liquid to fluoropolymer (IL/FP) in the polymer gel electrolyte layer.
• Actuator displacement increases with decreasing the amount of ionic liquid in the electrolyte, as the electrode composition is fixed.
• A maximum strain of 0.48% was observed from peak-to-peak displacement for an actuator with IL/FP = 0.3.

We have fabricated actuators from a blend of fluoropolymer (FP) with ionic liquid (IL). Here a combination of graphene, graphite, and silver nanoparticles is used to raise the electrode conductivity. As the electrode composition is fixed, we found that the actuator displacement increases with decreasing amount of ionic liquid in the polymer gel electrolyte. A maximum strain of 0.48% was observed from peak-to-peak displacement for an actuator with IL/FP = 0.3 in the polymer gel electrolyte. The simulation results indicate that lowering IL concentration leads to a more compact ion distribution in the electrode layers and hence explains the increased strain in the actuators.

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