Conducting polymers expand or contract when their redox state is changed. This expansion/contraction effect
can be separated in an intrinsic part because of changes of the polymer backbone on reduction/oxidation and
a part depending on the surrounding electrolyte phase, because of osmotic expansion of the polymer phase.
The osmotic effect causes solvent molecules to move into the polymer in a number far in excess of those
bound strongly in the solvation shell of the mobile ion, resulting in large volume changes. In this paper, a
thermodynamic description of the osmotic expansion is worked out. The model is compared with measurements
on PPy(DBS) films. The experiments show that the expansion decreases as the electrolyte concentration is
increased. This means that a considerable part of the total expansion is due to the osmotic effect. The osmotic
effect should be taken into account when interpreting and designing actuator experiments and when comparing
experimental results from different sources.
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