As one of electro active polymers for soft smart materials, the ionic polymer metal composites (IPMC) are easy to produce through chemical reduction processing and show high displacements at low voltage. When the IPMC actuates, the deformation depends on a few factors including the structure of based membrane, species and morphology of the metal electrodes, the nature of cations and the level of hydration. As previously published, we have been studying on improvement of actuation through surface electrode modification of IPMC to grasp the effect of electrode morphology on actuation. This study is comparative experiments through the chemical reaction and deposition by ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) in order to prepare the very thin and homogeneous surface electrode of IPMC. The IPMCs were prepared with different surface roughness of polymer membrane, and the influence of the surface roughness on the actuation was studied. By investigating the electrical properties and driving displacement, the actuating properties of IPMC with different surface roughness were studied.