A holistic approach to prestrain-locked high-performance acrylic dielectric elastomer thin films and multi-layer stacks

Abstract

Dielectric elastomers based on the commercial VHB tapes have been widely used for soft actuators due to their large electrically driven actuation strain, low cost, and high work density. However, the VHB films require prestretching to overcome electromechanical instability and have high viscoelasticity. In this work, we report a hybrid manufacturing approach to fabricate prestrain-locked high-performance dielectric elastomer (VHB-IPN-P) thin films and multilayer stacks. Four-layer stacks combing the VHB-IPN-P films and bilayer electrodes were fabricated via hybrid process to obtain strong inter-layer bonding and structural robustness of the stacks.