Growth simulation based on diffusion-limited aggregation method for dendritic interfacial electrodes inside IPMC

Ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs) with dendritic interfacial electrodes (DIEs) have attracted attention in recent years due to their excellent actuation performance. Although considerable efforts have been made to develop aggregation models of metal particles for the electrode formation of IPMC, there are few reports to simulate the growth of DIEs inside IPMC. In this work, we proposed an electrode model based on diffusion-limited aggregation method to simulate the growth process of DIEs inside IPMC by referring their preparation parameters and morphology characteristics. Meanwhile, the effects of immersion reduction (IR) cycles, immersion electroplating (IEP) time, IEP cycles, current intensity and voltage amplitude on the morphology and microstructure of DIEs were studied. It was found that the depth and the density of DIEs inside IPMC gradually increased with the increase of IR cycles, IEP time and IEP cycles. However, the growth depth of DIEs decreased significantly with the increase of current intensity. In addition, the voltage amplitude has little effect on the DIEs. This model is of great significance to the study of the formation mechanism of IPMC with DIEs.