Tunable electromechanical actuation in silicone dielectric film

• Published in: Smart materials and structures Vol. 23; no. 10; pp. 105001 - 8
• Main Authors: Lamberti, Andrea, Di Donato, Marco, Chiappone, Annalisa, Giorgis, Fabrizio, Canavese, Giancarlo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.10.2014; Institute of Physics
• Subjects: Actuation; actuator; Crosslinking; dielectric elastomer; Dielectrics; electroactive polymer; Electrodes; Exact sciences and technology; General equipment and techniques; Instruments, apparatus, components and techniques common to several branches of physics and astronomy; Lithography; Microfluidics; mixing ratio; Oligomers; PDMS; Physics; Silicone resins; Transducers; Dimethylsiloxane polymer; Electroactive polymer; Electromagnetic actuators; Dielectric thin films; Tensile tests; Displacement measurement; Vibrational modes; Chemical composition; Attenuated total reflection; Fourier-transformed infrared spectrometry; Time response; Electromechanical properties
• ISSN: 0964-1726; 1361-665X
• DOI: 10.1088/0964-1726/23/10/105001

Dielectric elastomer actuator films were fabricated on transparent conductive electrode using bi-component poly(dimethyl)siloxane (PDMS). PDMS is a well-known material in microfluidics and soft lithography for biomedical applications, being easy to process, low cost, biocompatible and transparent. Moreover its mechanical properties can be easily tuned by varying the mixing ratio between the oligomer base and the crosslinking agent. In this work we investigate the chemical composition and the electromechanical properties of PDMS thin film verifying for the first time the tuneable actuation response by simply modifying the amount of the curing agent. We demonstrate that, for a 20:1 ratio of base:crosslinker mixture, a striking 150% enhancement of Maxwell strain occurs at 1 Hz actuating frequency.