IPMC-Based Biomedical Applications

Ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) as an ionic electro-active polymer (EAP) offers many advantages over the conventional smart materials, such as good compliance, light weight, low operation voltage and capability of working in aqueous environments. These properties make IPMC promising for numerous applications in biomedical, naval, robotic and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) engineering (Paquette and Kim, 2004; Shahinpoor and Kim, 2005; Yamakita et al., 2004; Bar-Cohen, 2006; Zhang and Yang, 2006; 2007; Yang and Zhang, 2008). One of the important applications of IPMC is in the biomedical related instruments which come in contact with human organs or tissues, such as artificial ventricular muscles, surgical tools and active scleral bands. The configurations of IPMC materials for such applications could be in various forms including bands, rings or shells.