Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Mar 3;10(3):263.
doi: 10.3390/polym10030263.

Enhanced Figures of Merit for a High-Performing Actuator in Electrostrictive Materials

Nellie Della Schiava  1   2 , Kritsadi Thetpraphi  3 , Minh-Quyen Le  4 , Patrick Lermusiaux  5   6 , Antoine Millon  7   8 , Jean-Fabien Capsal  4 , Pierre-Jean Cottinet  9
Affiliations

Enhanced Figures of Merit for a High-Performing Actuator in Electrostrictive Materials

Nellie Della Schiava et al. Polymers (Basel). .

Abstract

The overall performance of an electrostrictive polymer is rated by characteristic numbers, such as its transverse strain, blocking force, and energy density, which are clearly limited by several parameters. Besides the geometrical impact, intrinsic material parameters, such as the permittivity coefficient as well as the Young's modulus and the breakdown electric field, have strong influences on the actuation properties of an electroactive polymer and thus on the device's overall behavior. As a result, an analysis of the figures of merit (FOMs) involving all relevant material parameters for the transverse strain, the blocking force, and the energy density was carried out, making it possible to determine the choice of polymer matrix in order to achieve a high actuator performance. Another purpose of this work was to demonstrate the possibility of accurately measuring the free deflection without the application of an external force and inversely measuring the blocking force under quasi-static displacement. The experimental results show good electrostrictive characteristics of the plasticized terpolymer under relatively low electric fields.

Keywords: actuators; blocking force measurement; deflection; electrostrictive unimorph cantilever; figure of merit; material optimization.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Principle schematic of the electrostrictive actuation.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Pertinent parameters and figures of merit for an electroactive polymer.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Strain versus electric field squares for different electrostrictive composites.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Longitudinal strain versus stress for different electrostrictive composites.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Breakdown probability versus electric field for different electrostrictive composites.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Breakdown probability versus electric field of modified terpolymers with different thicknesses.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Fabrication process of a P(VDF-TrFR-CTFE) composite actuator.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Photo of the test bench.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Photo of the unimorph under different input electric field values.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Free displacement versus electric field at 0.1 Hz for two terpolymer compositions.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Blocking force versus electric field for two terpolymer compositions.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Actuator force versus displacement at 0.1 Hz under different electric fields.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Mechanical energy density function of deflection for two compositions of terpolymer for an electric field of 40 V/μm.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bauer F. Relaxor fluorinated polymers: novel applications and recent developments. IEEE Trans. Dielectr. Electr. Insul. 2010;17:1106–1112. doi: 10.1109/TDEI.2010.5539681. - DOI
    1. Dorfmann A., Ogden R.W. Nonlinear electroelasticity. Acta Mech. 2005;174:167–183. doi: 10.1007/s00707-004-0202-2. - DOI
    1. Wissler M., Mazza E. Electromechanical coupling in dielectric elastomer actuators. Sens. Actuators Phys. 2007;138:384–393. doi: 10.1016/j.sna.2007.05.029. - DOI
    1. Le M.Q., Capsal J.-F., Galineau J., Ganet F., Yin X., Yang M.D., Chateaux J.-F., Renaud L., Malhaire C., Cottinet P.-J., Liang R. All-organic electrostrictive polymer composites with low driving electrical voltages for micro-fluidic pump applications. Sci. Rep. 2015;5 doi: 10.1038/srep11814. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rudykh S., Bhattacharya K., deBotton G. Snap-through actuation of thick-wall electroactive balloons. Int. J. Non-Linear Mech. 2012;47:206–209. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnonlinmec.2011.05.006. - DOI