Electrostatically driven soft polymer actuator based on dielectric elastomer

ElectroActive Polymers (EAPs) are emerging as new actuating means replacing the existing technologies such as piezoelectric, electrostatic, SMA etc. The dielectric elastomer actuator is regarded as the one of the most practically applicable actuators in the near future among the EAPs. In this paper, we introduce a new material capable of being employed as the dielectric elastomer actuator. The proposed material, which is a kind of the synthetic rubber, produces larger deformation as well as higher enegy efficiency, since it has a much higher dielectric constant compared to the previous ones. Beginning with the method of material synthesis, we give the description of its basic material properties by comparing with those of the existing materials for the dielectric elastomers. Also, the advantages of the proposed material as the actuating means are discussed with the several results of the experiments.