A review of coating materials for ionic polymer metal compounds for Nafion-117

Abstract The actuators based on ionic polymer metal composites or smart material are popular among many fields as robotic applications, biomedical applications and biometric applications due to their low actuation energy and high bending property on the application of voltage less than 4 V voltage. The Nafion-117 is being used as base material coated with the noble material for the same purpose. The coating is implemented to increase the thermal stability and water resistance property. The high cost of noble material coating increased the cost of IPMC 50% making its use limited in the industrial applications. The noble material used for this purpose is platinum, gold and silver. This paper emphases on reducing the cost of coating materials for Nafion-117 based IPMC. The various materials such as palladium, manganese oxide, titanium, lithium group materials and para-xylene group were compared for the purpose. The focused is done on reducing the coating cost by not compromising the efficiency to some extent. The sandwiched layer of IPMC that is nafion or flemion between the layers of noble material are most popular among fuel cells, artificial muscles and other robotic applications. The present comparative study has been done to develop a cheap smart material for industrial purpose and in biological applications like artificial muscles and coating of various elements.