Electromechanical transduction in multilayer ionic transducers

Abstract

A transducer consisting of multiple layers of ionic polymer material is developed for applications in sensing, actuation and control. A multilayer transducer is fabricated by layering individual transducers on top of one another. Each multilayer transducer consists of two to four individual layers each approximately 200 µm thick. The electrical characteristics of the transducers can be varied by connecting the layers in either a parallel arrangement or a series arrangement. The tradeoff in deflection and force is obtained by controlling the mechanical constraint at the interface. Packaging the transducer in an outer coating produces a hard constraint between layers and reduces the deflection with a force that increases linearly with the number of layers. This configuration also increases the bandwidth of the transducer. Removing the outer packaging produces an actuator that maintains the deflection of a single layer with an increased force output. This is obtained by allowing the layers to slide relative to one another during bending. Experiments on transducers with one to three layers are performed and the results are compared to an equivalent circuit model which was modified to accommodate multilayer transducers. The modification is performed on four different boundary conditions: two electrical, the series and the parallel connection, and two mechanical, the zero interfacial friction and the zero slip on the interface. Expressions for blocked force, free deflection, and electrical impedance of the transducer are developed in terms of fundamental material parameters, transducer geometry, and the number of individual layers. The trends in the transducer response are validated using experiments on transducers with multiple polymer layers.