IPMC Optimizing And Its Actuated Micropump Designing

Ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) is an electrically activated polymer (EAP) actuator, which is composed of a perfluorinated polymer membrane coated with a noble metal on both sides, such as Pt, Au, Cu. It can been widely applied to the artificial muscle, intelligent material and structure, and MEMS, since it has great advantages such as large deformation, low noise, light weight, flexibility and low driving voltages. Four aspects have been done in this thesis which focuses on research of the performance improvement of IPMC.(1) By carefully evaporating solvents out of the Nafion solution, recasted ion-exchange membranes were obtained. And the IPMC using the recasted Nafion membrane were fabricated by electroless plating. The elastic modulus of the recasted Nafion membrane and the commercial Nafion membrane were compared. A introduction of the IPMC experimental testing apparatus has been given, on the basis of which the blocking force of PFSA IPMC (commercial Nafion membrane as the matrix) and Si-PFSA IPMC (recasted Nafion membrane as the matrix) have been measured.(2) The recasted Nafion membranes were roughed through sandblasting process and polishing process, resulting in isotropic and anisotropic surface respectively, and the IPMCs were obtained by electroless plating of platinum on both treated surfaces of Nafion membrane. The microstructure of the polymer surface and metal electrode were analyzed and compared. Effects of the surface treatment on the displacement and the blocking force were studied under various voltages (2.0V,2.5V,3V,3.5V,4V, AC)and frequencies (0.1Hz,0.2Hz,0.5Hz).(3) In order to experimentally approach the process of optimizing the force output of ionic polymer metal composite, an orthogonal array method was used to identify potential specific manufacturing procedures. Once fabricated IPMC are tested for force outputs, the best ones would then be easily tracked back to fabricating procedure and will be further enhanced up to the desired levels by further refining the underlying manufacturing procedures. The measure chosen for optimization process was the force generated by a specific piece of IPMC of specific geometry.(4) A IPMC actuated micropump has been designed. The IPMC diaphragm was designed and fabricated. Three kinds of flap valve were designed and analyzed by the finite element analysis software (ANSYS 10.0). And The IPMC actuated micropump has been designed by UG.