Recently, Ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs), becoming an increasingly popular material, are used as soft actuators for its inherent properties of light weight, flexibility, softness, especial efficient transformation from electrical energy to mechanical energy with large bending strain response to low activation voltage. This paper mainly focuses on the suitable conditions for surface-roughening of Nafion 117 membrane. The surfaces of Nafion membrane were pretreated and optimized by sandblasting, mainly considering the change of sandblasting time and powder size. The modified surfaces are characterized in terms of their topography from the confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM) and SEM. Then, the detailed change in surface and interfacial electrodes and performances for IPMC actuators prepared by the roughened membranes, were measured and discussed. The results show that an optimized roughening condition with large interface area (capacitance) can effectively increases the electromechanical responses of IPMC.
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