IPMC Kirigami: A Distributed Actuation Concept

Abstract

Today's mechatronics relies on conventional transducers, i.e. lumped sensors and actuators with rigid construction. Future consumer products, medical devices and manufacturing processes require sensing and actuation systems with high count and density of individual transducer units. Such systems can be addressed as distributed transducers. Building distributed sensing and actuation systems with conventional transducers is economically unaffordable, and an alternative solution is needed. In this work we propose and study a methodology to build such distributed sensor and actuator systems from soft bending smart material transducers. Individual transducer units can be separated from the planar material substrate by cutting and etching techniques, and transducer counts and densities are only limited by the available smart materials and equipment. In this study we use laser ablation techniques to separate individual transducer units from the ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) sheets, and produce translational actuation units on the bending material substrate. IPMCs are manufactured in-house, different bending structure geometries are studied, and four different designs of the cm-scale translational platform units are realized and validated experimentally. The results demonstrate that it is possible to etch and cut a multitude of actuation units into planar bending smart material transducers, that bending actuation can be used to realize translation, and that the designs can be further miniaturized. Therefore, bending smart materials can be utilized to build monolithic distributed transducers.

Characterization of a Rectangular-Cut Kirigami Pattern for Soft Material Tuning

“…[18] showcases the development of a flexible robot for medication dosing within the human body, proposing the combined use of two kirigami patterns, one for navigation and another for medication dosing. Other actuators that use kirigami as a key design element can be found in [19][20][21][22].…”

Effects of Varied Planar Dimensions of IPMC on Simulated Actuation using COMSOL

“…Mechatronic systems are a combination of mechanical components, electrical components, and computer systems. They are used in a wide variety of applications, including compliant locomotion systems [1], small-scaled robotics [2], energy harvesting [3][4] (even though not as effective as electromagnetic harvesters [5] [6]), biomedical instrumentation [7] and robotics [8].…”

An Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC)-Driven Linear Peristaltic Microfluidic Pump

“…They are simple in construction, light-weight and compliant, allowing the realization of simple, light, damage-tolerant structures [13]. Furthermore, smart material transducers can be used to construct entire monolithic mechatronic systems, containing a high count and density of individual actuation units [14], addressed as distributed actuators.…”

“…This paper introduces the first IPMC-operated linear peristaltic pump for microfluidic applications. Our pump concept is based on a monolithic IPMC actuator that consists of eight individual actuation elements, following the distributed actuation concept of [14]. First, an IPMC actuator with Na + mobile ions is produced by chemically plating Nafion with platinum (Pt) electrodes.…”