Ultrahigh strain response of field-actuated elastomeric polymers

Kornbluh, Roy; Pelrine, Ron; Pei, Qibing; Oh, Seajin; Joseph, Jose

doi:10.1117/12.387763

Cited by 138 publications

(132 citation statements)

References 6 publications

(10 reference statements)

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“…47,89 In addition, variability in materials and manufacturing processes can cause some considerable uncertainty about the robustness of individual DE. For example, while electric fields in excess of 400 Â 10 6 V/m have been used in laboratory experiments, 24 in practice, DE devices are operated at a fraction of this field strength in order to avoid dielectric breakdown due to manufacturing imperfections and wear, significantly limiting DE operation.…”

Section: Mechano-sensitivity Cyber-proprioception Cyber-pain mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16 Kornbluh et al have performed similar experiments and achieved a peak breakdown strength of 412 MV/m for VHB 4910 with 300% equibiaxial stretch. 24 While it is not clear how breakdown strength is boosted, it has been suggested that the increase is related to stretch-induced structural alignment in the polymer chains that serves to inhibit the flow of charge across the membrane (Fig. 3).…”

Section: Introduction-dielectric Elastomer (De) Background and Funmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multi-functional dielectric elastomer artificial muscles for soft and smart machines

Anderson

Gisby²,

McKay³

et al. 2012

Journal of Applied Physics

548

314

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Dielectric elastomer (DE) actuators are popularly referred to as artificial muscles because their impressive actuation strain and speed, low density, compliant nature, and silent operation capture many of the desirable physical properties of muscle. Unlike conventional robots and machines, whose mechanisms and drive systems rapidly become very complex as the number of degrees of freedom increases, groups of DE artificial muscles have the potential to generate rich motions combining many translational and rotational degrees of freedom. These artificial muscle systems can mimic the agonist-antagonist approach found in nature, so that active expansion of one artificial muscle is taken up by passive contraction in the other. They can also vary their stiffness. In addition, they have the ability to produce electricity from movement. But departing from the high stiffness paradigm of electromagnetic motors and gearboxes leads to new control challenges, and for soft machines to be truly dexterous like their biological analogues, they need precise control. Humans control their limbs using sensory feedback from strain sensitive cells embedded in muscle. In DE actuators, deformation is inextricably linked to changes in electrical parameters that include capacitance and resistance, so the state of strain can be inferred by sensing these changes, enabling the closed loop control that is critical for a soft machine. But the increased information processing required for a soft machine can impose a substantial burden on a central controller. The natural solution is to distribute control within the mechanism itself. The octopus arm is an example of a soft actuator with a virtually infinite number of degrees of freedom (DOF). The arm utilizes neural ganglia to process sensory data at the local “arm” level and perform complex tasks. Recent advances in soft electronics such as the piezoresistive dielectric elastomer switch (DES) have the potential to be fully integrated with actuators and sensors. With the DE switch, we can produce logic gates, oscillators, and a memory element, the building blocks for a soft computer, thus bringing us closer to emulating smart living structures like the octopus arm. The goal of future research is to develop fully soft machines that exploit smart actuation networks to gain capabilities formerly reserved to nature, and open new vistas in mechanical engineering.

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Section: Mechano-sensitivity Cyber-proprioception Cyber-pain mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction-dielectric Elastomer (De) Background and Funmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-functional dielectric elastomer artificial muscles for soft and smart machines

Anderson

Gisby²,

McKay³

et al. 2012

Journal of Applied Physics

548

314

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“…Prestretching the elastomeric polymer has a significant influence on the performance of the actuators such as the actuation strain [2,27]. We report the effect of uniaxial prestretch on the performance of our 100 m × 100 m actuators in Section 4.1.…”

Section: Actuation Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

An array of 100μm×100μm dielectric elastomer actuators with 80% strain for tissue engineering applications

Akbari

Shea

2012

Sensors and Actuators A: Physical

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a b s t r a c tBiological cells modulate their behavior, express genes, proliferate or differentiate in response to mechanical strains ranging from 1% to 20%. There currently exists no technique to apply strain to many targeted individual cells in a larger culture in order to perform parallelized high throughput testing. Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are compliant devices capable of generating large percentage strains with sub-second response time, ideally suited by their compliance for cell manipulation. We report an array of 100 m × 100 m DEAs reaching up to 80% in-plane strain at an electric field of 240 V/m. The miniaturized DEAs are made by patterning 100 m wide compliant ion-implanted gold electrodes on both sides of a 30 m thick polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane. We report the important effect of uniaxial prestretch of the membrane on the microactuators' performance; the largest strain is achieved by prestretching uniaxially by 175%. Each actuator is intended to have a single cell adhered to it in order to periodically stretch the cells to study the effect of mechanical stimulation on its biochemical responses. To avoid short-circuiting all the top electrodes by the conductive saline cell growth medium, a 20 m thick biocompatible PDMS layer is bonded on the actuators. In this configuration, 37% strain is achieved at 3.6 kV with sub-second response. This device can be used as a high throughput single cell stretcher to apply relevant biological periodic strains to individual cells in a single experiment.

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“…It has been shown that pre-stretching the membrane modifies the performance of the DEAs by increasing the breakdown electric field and modifying stiffness of the elastomer [31,32]. In our design, the PDMS membrane is bonded to a Pyrex chip by oxygen plasma activation which has an average bond strength of 300 kPa [33], corresponding to 20% pre-stretch of Sylgard 186.…”

Section: Design Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microfabrication and characterization of an array of dielectric elastomer actuators generating uniaxial strain to stretch individual cells

Akbari¹,

Shea²

2012

J. Micromech. Microeng.

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Cells regulate their behavior in response to mechanical strains. Cell cultures to study mechanotransuction are typically cm 2 in area, far too large to monitor single cell response. We have developed an array of dielectric elastomer microactuators as a tool to study mechanotransduction of individual cells. The array consists of 72 100 μm × 200 μm electroactive polymer actuators which expand uniaxially when a voltage is applied. Single cells will be attached on each actuator to study their response to periodic mechanical strains. The device is fabricated by patterning compliant microelectrodes on both sides of a 30 μm thick polydimethylsiloxane membrane, which is bonded to a Pyrex chip with 200 μm wide trenches. Low-energy metal ion implantation is used to make stretchable electrodes and we demonstrate here the successful miniaturization of such ion-implanted electrodes. The top electrode covers the full membrane area, while the bottom electrodes are 100 μm wide parallel lines, perpendicular to the trenches. Applying a voltage between the top and bottom electrodes leads to uniaxial expansion of the membrane at the intersection of the bottom electrodes and the trenches. To characterize the in-plane strain, an array of 4 μm diameter aluminum dots is deposited on each actuator. The position of each dot is tracked, allowing displacement and strain profiles to be measured as a function of voltage. The uniaxial strain reaches 4.7% at 2.9 kV with a 0.2 s response time, sufficient to stimulate most cells with relevant biological strains and frequencies.

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Ultrahigh strain response of field-actuated elastomeric polymers

Cited by 138 publications

References 6 publications

Multi-functional dielectric elastomer artificial muscles for soft and smart machines

Multi-functional dielectric elastomer artificial muscles for soft and smart machines

An array of 100μm×100μm dielectric elastomer actuators with 80% strain for tissue engineering applications

Microfabrication and characterization of an array of dielectric elastomer actuators generating uniaxial strain to stretch individual cells

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