Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, Vol.519, 115-120, 2010
Fabrication of Bi-Directional Bending Organic Actuators Consisting of Stacked Polypyrrole Films With Different Expansion and Contraction Ratios
An organic conductor, polypyrrole has been extensively studied as one of the prospective soft actuator materials. In this paper, simple bimorph actuators consisting of an electropolymerized polypyrrole (PPy) film and an adhesive tape were fabricated. It turned out that those actuators nonuniformly bent depending on the distance between the actuator and the counter electrode. Then, a structure consisting of polypyrrole/both-side adhesive tape/polypyrrole, whose two polypyrrole films have different extension/contraction ratios, has been fabricated, and it was found that the actuator exhibited more uniform bending deformation which was nearly independent of the distance between the actuator and the counter electrode.