(540i) Physical Reconstructing Nanostructured Network of Thermoplastic Dielectric Elastomer

Electro-active dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA), a promising artificial muscle, uses electrostatic forces to compress insulated soft elastomer film in thickness to generate deformation, where the mechanical behaviors of the elastomer determine the electro-actuated behavior. Two existing big challenges in DEA are fundamentally related to the mechanical behaviors of elastomers: 1. Soft elastomers usually lack strain-hardening behaviors, which make them suffer from electro-mechanical instability during actuation to show small actuation strain (<20%); 2. Soft elastomers are usually mechanically isotropic, so the actuated deformations are equal-biaxial expansion in the plane, which is unfavorable in real applications. We propose a physical training method combing the thermal treatment and mechanical forces, which can reconstruct the networks of triblock copolymer elastomers to make it show intense strain-hardening behaviors and anisotropic tensile behaviors. Using this method, we can now realize the fabrication of dielectric elastomer actuators with very large actuation strain (150%) and muscle-like anisotropic deformation output.