SGER: Modeling Ionic Polymer Metal Composite Actuators and Sensors for Microgripper Applications

离子聚合物金属复合材料（IPMC）代表了一种非常不同的方法来构建微夹持器手指，与标准的微机械加工方法相比，其中半导体制造工具用于从多晶硅和相关材料中创建手指。虽然已经有大量的活动在建模IPMC，无论是作为执行器和传感器，有一个显着的差距，在知识的这种迷人的材料。没有模型可以预测材料被切割成任意形状时可能产生的变形和潜在力。这是一个重大的知识差距，因为它迫使使用这种材料的应用程序简单地猜测一个？好吗？微夹钳手指的形状。有了模型，手指形状的设计就变成了一个优化问题，即，更科学，更不随意。因此，建模结果输入到一个强大的智能概念的微夹钳手指，可以执行微操作，同时它感测其环境中的有效和智能的方式。这项工作将开发一个模型，计算一个任意形状的IPMC微型手指给定的激励电压放置在手指上的任何位置的形状。这将最终导致微指设计，产生所需的力和偏转的特定应用。

Ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) materials represent a very different approach to building microgripper fingers, in contrast with the standard micromachining approach, where semiconductor fabrication tools are used to create fingers out of polysilicon and related materials. Although there has been substantial activity in modeling IPMCs, both as actuators and sensors, there is a significant gap in the knowledge of this fascinating material. There is no model that predicts the deformation and potential force that the material can produce when it is cut into an arbitrary shape. This is a significant gap in knowledge because it forces applications that use this material to simply guess a ?good? shape for the microgripper fingers. With a model, the design of finger shapes becomes an optimization problem, i.e., more scientific, less ad hoc. As a consequence, the modeling results feed into a robust intelligence concept of a microgripper finger that can perform micromanipulation while it senses its environment in an effective and intelligent fashion. This work will develop a model that computes the shape of an arbitrarily shaped IPMC microfinger given an excitation voltage placed at any location on the finger. This will eventually lead to microfinger designs that produce desired forces and deflections for specific applications.