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Article 1
IPMC is one of material that might be bent when electricity goes through it. The bending magnitude can be easily controlled by how big electricity is supplied to the specimen. It also able to work in wet environment and the operation of this material is relatively quiet. Also, the bending mechanism is simple that this material can be applied to many complicated machine or robots to perform many complicated things. The way IPMC work is that when electricity goes through it, positively charged ion will go to one side, and negatively charged ion will go to the other side, thus creating a concentration on each side and bend.

There are a lot of available commercially produced IPMC, some of them are Nafion (DuPont) and Flemion (Asahi glass), these material is sold in a form of thin membranes (100-300) microns thickness. IPMC is essentially a material that has 2 electrodes on both sides so that electricity can go through it.

Research conducted by D.Pugal et.al focuses on manufacturing different shapes of IPMC and how to make it bendable in many direction, since so far IPMC might only be bended in one direction only. There are a couple methods that these researchers use to achieve such properties, one of which is using hot press method.

First, Ionic polymer beads is processed using a hot press machine to produce a certain shape like fish fin, cube, rod, etc. Now the next step is to electroplating those specimens. They are trying to modified the pattern of electrodes that will be applied to the surface of ionic polymer, by photolithography or laser printing. Such methods are used to allow multiple bending direction of the ionic polymer. The researchers are able to modify the bending motion of the IPMC by altering the electrodes on the surface, and enable it to bend in many directions like twisting.

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