Charge Localization Instability in a Highly Deformable Dielectric Elastomer

2014

Article

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This paper shows that a highly deformable capacitor made of a soft dielectric and two conformal electrodes can switch between two states discontinuously, by a first-order transition, as the total charge varies gradually. When the total charge is small, it spreads evenly over the area of the capacitor, and the capacitor deforms homogeneously. When the total charge is large, it localizes in a small region of the capacitor, and this region thins down preferentially. The capacitor will survive the localization without electrical breakdown if the area of the electrode is small. Such a bistable system may lead to useful devices.

@article{Keplinger14-APL-LocalizationInstability,
  title = {Charge Localization Instability in a Highly Deformable Dielectric Elastomer},
  author = {Lu, Tongqing and Keplinger, Christoph and Arnold, Nikita and Bauer, Siegfried and Suo, Zhigang},
  journal = {Applied Physics Letters},
  volume = {104},
  number = {2},
  pages = {022905},
  month = jan,
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.1063/1.4862325},
  month_numeric = {1}
}