Investigation of Stencil/ Screen Printing of Silver (Ag) electrodes for Ionic Polymer Metal Composites (IPMCs)

摘要

The main method for Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) electrode fabrication employs RED-OX deposition of noblemetals. However, as this chemical plating technique is expensive, time-consuming and uses dangerous chemicals, weinvestigate the deposition of silver (Ag) electrodes by an additive manufacturing technique; stencil/ screen printing. Theresults indicate exceptional adhesion and mechanical stability of the cured ink to the Nafion. Moreover, the electricalproperties (surface resistance measurements with the 2-probe method), microstructure (with Scanning ElectronMicroscopy), in addition to the electro-active properties (deflection measurements after slight hydration of sample in waterand the application of square waveforms of 10 V in amplitude and 0.05 Hz in frequency) of the 5 mm × 20 mm Agmetalised IPMCs in a cantilever configuration are tested. Resistances are low, in the range of 1.1 - 1.6 Ω, and SEMmicrographs indicate electrodes of 10 μm in thickness. Preliminary results illustrate a similar relationship of the induceddisplacements and the applied voltages and for the samples. The methodology for the fabricated Ag - stencil/ screenprinted- electroded IPMCs is introduced, and the properties of these IPMCs are exhibited. This paper hence presents aproof of principle study, utilising a method that can significantly reduce IPMC production costs, as it decreases materialprises by approximately 98% and fabrication times from 48 hours down to less than an hour compared to the state-of-thearttechnique.