System for deposition and characterization of polypyrrole/gold bilayer hinges

We report on a custom designed system for the deposition and characterization of polypyrrole bilayer actuators. Unlike conventional commercial electrochemical cells and potentiostats, the system described in this paper has specifications commensurate to its application and thus can be readily implemented using off the shelf electronic components at relatively low cost. Deposition rates and actuation are computer controlled through a standard data acquisition interface card with a program written in Matlab. We also discuss the design of the masks that are employed to fabricate the polypyrrole structures. This is accomplished through silicon compilation using the CAD software LEDIT (1999) from Tanner Research. We have implemented a selection of parameterized routines in the LEDIT script language LComp that greatly reduces design turnaround time