Robotic Materials

Harnessing Snap-Through Instability in Soft Dielectrics to Achieve Giant Voltage-Triggered Deformation

2012

Article

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A soft dielectric membrane is prone to snap-through instability. We present theory and experiment to show that the instability can be harnessed to achieve giant voltage-triggered deformation. We mount a membrane on a chamber of a suitable volume, pressurize the membrane into a state near the verge of the instability, and apply a voltage to trigger the snap without causing electrical breakdown. For an acrylic membrane we demonstrate voltage-triggered expansion of area by 1692%, far beyond the largest value reported in the literature. The large expansion can even be retained after the voltage is switched off.

Author(s): Christoph Keplinger and Tiefeng Li and Richard Baumgartner and Zhigang Suo and Siegfried Bauer
Journal: Soft Matter
Volume: 8
Number (issue): 2
Pages: 285--288
Year: 2012
Month: October
Department(s): Robotic Materials
Bibtex Type: Article (article)
Paper Type: Journal
DOI: 10.1039/C1SM06736B
State: Published

BibTex 

@article{Keplinger12-SM-SoftDielectrics,
  title = {Harnessing Snap-Through Instability in Soft Dielectrics to Achieve Giant Voltage-Triggered Deformation},
  author = {Keplinger, Christoph and Li, Tiefeng and Baumgartner, Richard and Suo, Zhigang and Bauer, Siegfried},
  journal = {Soft Matter},
  volume = {8},
  number = {2},
  pages = {285--288},
  month = oct,
  year = {2012},
  doi = {10.1039/C1SM06736B},
  month_numeric = {10}
}