Experimental estimate of viscoelastic properties for ionic polymer-metal composites.

We propose an experimental method for estimating the general time-dependent elastic moduli of ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMCs). The materials exhibit fast and large bending motion even when a small voltage about 1 V is applied, and are expected to be used for polymer actuators. Experimental measurements for an IPMC beam of silver plated Nafion are given to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method. For the IPMC beam we also present a viscoelastic model, which describes the experimental results successfully.