An autocatalytic electro-less plating of nickel is attempted to replace an electroless impregnation-reduction (IR) method in ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) actuators to reduce cost and processing time. Because nucleation time of Pd-Sn colloids is the determining factor of overall processing time, we used the nucleation time as our control parameter. To optimize nucleation time and investigate its effect on the performance of IPMC actuators, we analyzed the relationship between the nucleation time, interface morphology and electrical properties. The optimized nucleation time was 10 h. The trends of the performance and electrical properties as a function of nucleation time were attributed to the fact that the Ni penetration depth was determined by the minimum diffusion length of either Pd-Sn colloids or reducing agent ions. The Ni-IPMC actuators can be fabricated less than 14 h processing time without deteriorating performance of the actuators, which is comparable to Pt-IPMC prepared by IR method. Published by Elsevier Ltd.