Hybrid Dielectric Elastomers Exhibiting Tunable Electroactive Properties

Dielectric elastomers are smart materials that exhibit large strain with an applied voltage. A common challenge seen throughout dielectric elastomers today is the high driving voltage required for actuation strain. This makes applying dielectric elastomers into some wearable applications unfeasible due to safety concerns. For safe and higher strain materials, we attempt to create dielectric elastomers that contain low moduli and improved mechanical and dielectric properties, resulting in a material that produces high strain at low voltage. Techniques commonly used to enhance properties have been to incorporate nanoparticles into polymer networks to achieve hybrid dielectric elastomers that perform tunable electroactive properties. Through in situ and freeradical polymerization methods, poly(lauryl methacrylate) (PLMA) has been lightly crosslinked and contains silica nanoparticles with polynorbornene grafts or gold nanoparticles. With the addition of nanoparticles into the polymer networks, PLMA networks experienced slight improvement of mechanical properties. Since nanoparticle size and dispersion strongly influence dielectric properties, SAXS and TEM are important characterization methods to utilize when trying to understand structure-property relations. We found the incorporation of PNB grafted silica nanoparticles led to increased moduli and decreased dielectric constant, while gold nanoparticles led to decreased moduli and dielectric constant. Therefore, non-dispersed nanoparticles and possible nanoparticle aggregation could be what led to the results of no significant improvement of dielectric properties with the addition of nanoparticles.

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Work Title Hybrid Dielectric Elastomers Exhibiting Tunable Electroactive Properties
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Open Access
Creators
  1. Siyana Dottin
  2. Jensen N. Sevening
  3. Robert J. Hickey
License No Copyright - U.S.
Work Type Research Paper
Publication Date July 2022
Deposited October 10, 2023

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    • Jensen N. Sevening, Robert J. Hickey
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