Dielectric elastomer actuators soft elastomers

Electro-electret (dielectric-elastomer actuator, sensor or energy harvester) External voltage induces charges on compliant electrodes Compression/ rarefaction of elastomer (charges stay on soft electrodes) Incompressibility leads to change in length/width or to bending... 

Aschwanden M, Stemmer A (2007) Low voltage, highly tunable difiSaction grating based on dielectric elastomer actuators. Proc SPIE 6524 65241N Bates FS, Fredrickson GH (1999) Block copolymers designer soft materials. Phys Today... 

A display developed at SRI International (Fig. 4) has inspired many subsequent efforts. A soft flat polymer surface (Fig. 4a) was dimpled by depressions (Fig. 4b) when the dielectric elastomer actuators bonded to the bottom surface were actuated (Prahlad et al. 2005). Key elements of this design included ... 

JordiC, Michel S, FinkE (2010) Fish-like propulsion of an airship with planar membrane dielectric elastomer actuators. Bioinspir Biomim 5(2) 026007 Knoop L, Rossiter J (2014) Towards shear tactile displays with DEAs. Proc SPIE 9056 905610 Kofod G, Paajanen M, Bauer S (2006) Self-organized minimum-energy stmctures for dielectric elastomer actuators. Appl Phys A 85(2) 141-143 Koo I, Jung K, Koo J et al (2008) Development of soft-actuator-based wearable tactile display. IEEE Trans Robot 24(3) 549-558... 

Simple dielectric elastomer actuators can readily be made in an afternoon widi basic tools and from low-cost materials fliat can all easily be ordered online. Many examples of simple actuators with instructions can be found on YouTube (simply search for dielectric elastomer actuator ). The Soft Robotics TooUdf website (http //soflroboticstoolkit.com/book/dielecliic-elastomer-actuators) provides... 

Today the number of electroactive polymers has grown substantially. There currently exists a wide variety of such materials, ranging from rigid carbon-nanotubes to soft dielectric elastomers. A number of reviews and overviews have been prepared on these and other materials for use as artificial muscles and other applications [1, 2, 7, 10, 11, 13-28]. The next section will provide a survey of the most common electrically activated EAP technologies and provide some pertinent performance values. The remainder of the paper will focus specifically on dielectric elastomers. Several actuation properties for these materials are summarized in Table 1.1 along with other actuation technologies including mammalian muscle. It is important to note that data was recorded for different materials under different conditions so the information provided in the table should only be used as a qualitative comparison tool. 

Shankar R, Ghosh TK, Spontak R (2007) Dielectric elastomers as next-generation polymeric actuators. Soft Matter 3 1116... 

In this research, a new type of dynamic Braille display is presented. It employs a dielectric elastomer for the basis of the tactile display. It is constmcted with a notably simple mechanical and electrical architecture. The proposed device is organized with a dual-layered array of tactile cells that generates vertical motion used to push up or down the Braille pins. These electrically driven tactile cells can generate either small-scale vibratory motion or linear displacement. They differ from conventional devices in softness and controllable compliance, cost effectiveness, simple manufacturability and high actuator density. Furthermore, the small size of the proposed concept enables the development of a high-density display device. 

Petralia MT, Wood RJ (2010) Fabrication and analysis of dielectric-elastomer minimum-energy stractures for highly-deformable soft robotic systems. In Proceedings of 2010 lEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems, Taipei, pp 2357-2363 Rosset S, Shea HR (2012) Flexible and stretchable electrodes for dielectric elastomer actuators. 

The dielectric synthetic elastomers were studied in multi-stacked configuration. In addition to relative simplicity, it produces notably high strain. In order to control it, a PWM-PID controller was designed. The designed actuator has very high force-to-weight ratio, is cost effective and easy to fabricate. Furthermore, it serves as a biomimetic actuator due to soft musclelike characteristics. 

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