Making IPMC correctly?

[Phafnaroph]

Hey y'all,

I've been trying to make an Ionic Polymer Metal Composite for my first robot. With the research I've done I think IPMC is probably the best material for a synthetic muscle in terms of soft robotics. I've compiled a procedure to create it at home but it seems I've made a few errors. One of the errors is not having electrode layers on the final product, but more on that later.

The (incomplete) procedure goes like this
Ingredients:
- Nafion N-212
- Distilled water
- 0.1M Silver nitrate
- 0.1M Sodium Hypophosphite

Steps:
1. Roughen the Nafion (this improves surface reactions) and immerse Nafion in distilled water for 30 min.
2. In a new bowl, mix silver nitrate into distilled water and immerse Nafion in that for an hour.
3. Wash off Nafion with distilled water. In another bowl, mix sodium hypophosphite and distilled water and immerse Nafion in it for 30 minutes.
4. Wash off Nafion again and let it dry.

The most immediate issue I noticed was that after the first step, the Nafion separated into 3 distinct layers. I couldn't find any mention of this behaviour in the papers, so I'm guessing this suggests the Nafion was of poor quality? I did buy the cheapest I could find...

An obvious error in retrospect is not creating electrode layers. I couldn't even test the final product because it isn't conductive. If anybody knows of a plating method that I can do DIY with accessible ingredients, please share it with me.

I've included a picture of the Nafion after the first step (where you can see some separation forming already) and the final Nafion product.




Thank you for reading and tell me your thoughts in the responses!