High speed electromechanical response of ionic microactuators

This paper presents the synthesis and characterization of thin and ultra-fast conducting polymer microactuators which can operate in the open air. Compared to all previous existing electronic conducting polymer based microactuators, this approach deals with the synthesis of robust interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) combined with a spincoating technique in order to tune and drastically reduce the thickness of conducting IPN microactuators using a so-called “trilayer” configuration. Patterning of electroactive materials has been performed with existing technologies, such as standard photolithography and dry etching. The smallest air-operating microbeam actuator based on conducting polymer is then described with dimensions as low as 160x30x6 μm3. Under electrical stimulation the translations of small ion motion into bending deformations are used as tools to demonstrate that small ion vibrations can still occur at frequency as several hundreds of Hz. Conducting IPN microactuators are then promising candidates to develop new MEMS combining downscaling, softness, low driving voltage, and fast response speed.