Electromechanical coupling of polypyrrole trilayer actuators

Conducting polymers (CP) are promising electro-active polymers and have been increasingly used in actuator applications. This paper is intended to characterize the electromechanical correlation between the current input and curvature output of polypyrrole trilayer actuators. A mathematical model was developed using the multilayer bending theory and an analogy between thermal expansion and ion insertion. The experimental results show that both the curvature and current share a similar tendency to exponential decay. The correlated coefficients were obtained by using least-squares curve fitting method.