JimmyTingrui PanProf. Babak Ziaie

University of Minnesota NSF-REU Summer 2003

Brief Overview

• What the hell are Conductive Polymer Microactuators?

• Motivation / unreachable goal

• Experimentation and fabrication

• Future Work

What is this stuff?

• Conducting Polymer : Certain kind of polymer which undergoes a volume change in an ionic solution under an applied voltage, such as polypyrrole (PPy)

• Microactuator : Something really tiny that moves.

How it works

I stole this picture fair and square

What we want

Ahmed Glaucoma Valve, implantable (only one color available)

How to get there

• Grow PPy

• Pattern PPy

• Fabricate an actuator

• Actuate an actuator

• Create valve

Growing PPy

Another stolen picture, depicting electropolymerization

• Electrolyte : 0.1 M pyrrole in aqeous 0.1 M Sodium

Dodecylbenzenesulfonate (NaDBS)

• Applied voltages range from 0.5v – 0.8v

Smoothness• Higher voltage resulted in much faster yet

rougher deposition

0.5v 0.6v 0.7v 0.8v

Actuator Test Patterns

Fabrication!

Silicon

Silicon Oxide (SiO2)

Titanium

Gold

PPy

Actuation!

Immersed in 0.1 M aqueous NaDBS, -1v applied

Oh crap.• Problem : Actuator ‘fingers’ like to tear off

• Possible solution : make them thicker, handle them more gently

What’s Next?

• Actuate the damn thing

• Fabricate valves

• Design drainage device

(No, this won’t happen in the next week)

What Else?• Artificial cilia, anyone?

This is a caption

Lookit all the little holes!

If you can read this, you don’t need eyeglasses

Maybe it’s grass?

Silicon

Gold

PPy

?????

Silicon

Gee, that was fun

• Researched and grew PPy films

• Designed actuators

• Hope to someday make something cool

Any questions?

This is an outright copyright violation, and I will burn in hell.