Creeping and structural effects in Faradaic artificial muscles

Reliable polymeric motors are required for the construction of rising accurate robots for surgeon assistance. Artificial muscles based on the electrochemistry of conducting polymers fulfil most of the required characteristics, except the presence of creeping effects during actuation. To avoid it, or to control it, a deeper knowledge of its physicochemical origin is required. With this aim here bending bilayer tape/PPy-DBSH (Polypyrrole-dodecylbenzylsulphonic acid) full polymeric artificial muscles were cycled between −2.5 and 1 V in aqueous solutions with parallel video recording of the described angular movement. Coulo-voltammetric (charge-potential, QE), dynamo-voltammetric (angle-potential, αE), and coulo-dynamic (charge-angle, Qα) muscular responses corroborate that 10 % of the charge is consumed by irreversible reactions overlapping the polymer reduction at the most cathodic potentials. In parallel, the range of the bending angular movement (145°) shifts by 15° per cycle (creeping effect) pointing to the irreversible charge as possible origin of the irreversible swelling of the PPy-DBS film. Different slopes in the closed loop part of the QE identify the different reaction driven structural processes in the film: oxidation-shrinking, oxidation compaction, reduction-relaxation, reduction-swelling, and reduction-vesicle’s formation. Despite the irreversible charge fraction, the muscle motor keeps a Faradaic behaviour: described angles are linear functions of the consumed charge in the full potential range