Improved Frequency Investigation of IPMC Based Sensors

Ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs) are active materials that exhibit interesting bidirectional electromechanical coupling phenomena: by bending an IPMC strip a voltage output is obtained, while a voltage input is able to cause the strip to bend. They are of increasing interest in innovative applications due to several advantages respect to competing technologies (SMA, piezoelectric, etc.), such as the possibility to be used both as moving actuators and sensors, their lightness and the low actuation voltage. In this work a new experimental setup to investigate IPMC behaviour as sensors, in a wide range of frequency, is described and some results of the analysis of sensing properties of IPMCs strips are presented. In particular, attention is focused on the frequency analysis of the IPMCs in a cantilever bender configuration