The interplay between symmetry-breaking and symmetry-preserving bifurcations in soft dielectric films and the emergence of giant electro-actuation

Abstract

Soft elastomers that can exhibit extremely large deformations under the action of an electric field are essential for applications such as soft robotics, stretchable and flexible electronics, energy harvesting among others. The critical limiting factor in conventional electro-actuation of such materials is the occurrence of the so-called pull-in instability. In this work, we demonstrate an extraordinarily simple way to coax a dielectric thin film towards a symmetry-breaking pitchfork bifurcation state while avoiding pull-in instability. Through the nonlinear interplay between the two bifurcation modes, we predict electro-actuation strains that exceed what is conventionally possible by 200$\%$, and at significantly lower applied electric fields.

References in corpus (4)

• Unfolding the Sulcus
• Catastrophic thinning of dielectric elastomers
• Architected Elastomer Networks for Optimal Electromechanical Response
• Statistical Mechanical Analysis of the Electromechanical Coupling in an Electrically-Responsive Polymer Chain

Cited by in corpus (8)

• A tutorial on the stability and bifurcation analysis of the electromechanical behaviour of soft materials
• Statistical mechanics of a dielectric polymer chain in the force ensemble
• Statistical field theory for nonlinear elasticity of polymer networks with excluded volume interactions
• Statistical Field Theory of Polarizable Polymer Chains with Nonlocal Dipolar Interactions
• Analysis of axisymmetric necking of a circular dielectric membrane based on a one-dimensional model
• Exploiting Instabilities to Enable Large Shape Transformations in Dielectric Elastomers
• Nonuniqueness in Defining the Polarization: Nonlocal Surface Charges and the Electrostatic, Energetic, and Transport Perspectives
• Soft Electromechanical Elastomers Impervious to Instability