Effects of electrical properties of papers and electrodes for electro-active paper actuators

초록

Electro-active paper (EAPap) is a paper that produces large displacement with small force under an electrical excitation. EAPap is made with a chemically treated paper by constructing thin electrodes on both sides of the paper. When electrical voltage is applied on the electrodes the EAPap produces bending displacement. To improve the bending performance of EAPap, different paper fibers?softwood, hardwood, bacteria cellulose, cellophane, carbon mixture paper, electrolyte containing paper and Korean traditional paper, are tested. It was found that a cellophane paper exhibits a remarkable bending performance. When 2kV/mm of excitation voltage was applied, more than 3mm of tip displacement was observed out of the 30 mm long paper beam. Different thin electrodes were made by two methods?a sputtering technique and an evaporation technique. The evaporation technique is better than the sputtering technique since it can produce the electrodes at relatively low temperature, which does not change the material properties of papers significantly. The principle that dictates the actuation of EAPap seems to be more based on ionic migration effect associated with the reaction of the constituents of the paper. Details of the experiments and results are addressed.