Performance enhancement of IPMC by anisotropic Plasma etching process

Ionic Polymer-Metal Composites (IPMCs) of EAP actuators is famous for its good property of response and durability. The performance of Ionic Polymer-Metal Composites (IPMCs) is an important issue which is affected by many factors. There are two factors for deciding the performance of IPMC. By treating anisotropic plasma etching process to 6 models of the IPMCs, enhanced experimental displacement and force results are obtained. Plasma patterning processes are executed by changing the groove and the land length of 6 patterns. The purpose of the present investigation is to find out the major factor which mainly affects the IPMC performance. Simulations using ANSYS have been executed to compare with the experimental results about the values and the tendency of data. Experimental and simulating data of the performances seem to have similar tendency. In the next part of the paper, we observed the other properties like capacitance, resistance and stiffness of 6 plasma patterned IPMCs. And we observed that the stiffness is the major factor which affects the performance of IPMCs. As we seen, our problem has been reduced to investigate about the property of stiffness. We suggest that the stiffness is largely changed mainly because of the different thickness of Platinum stacked of the groove and the land part which are produced by anisotropic plasma etching processes. And we understand that anisotropic plasma patterned IPMCs of better performance can be applied to various applications.