Relationships between pretreatment methods and properties of ion-electroactive polymers based on image analysis technology

In recent years, ion-electroactive polymers have attracted much attention because of their good flexibility, but the effect mechanisms of their pretreatment on the electrode and actuation property are not clear. In this paper, the intrinsic fractal characteristics of the interface contact of ion-electroactive polymers are characterized based on two-dimensional scanning images. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of different pretreatment methods on the property of ion-electroactive polymers. Based on the image analysis technology, the contact contour of the interface between the electrode and the polymer membrane was extracted using the processing software, and the fractal dimension and Hurst index of the interface were calculated by programming the calculation code using the root mean square (RMS) method and the rescaled range analysis (RRA) method. The obtained fractal parameters were then applied to the derivation of the capacitance at the interface and the effect of the fractal dimension on the displacement was discussed. The results show that the vertical pre-processing of the ion-electroactive polymer can significantly increase the capacitance and thus facilitate the output of the actuation displacement. It is a feasible way to analyze the fractal characteristics of interface by two-dimensional image analysis technology.