Achieving high performance electric field induced strain: a rational design of hyperbranched aromatic polyamide functionalized graphene-polyurethane dielectric elastomer composites.

Abstract

Dielectric elastomers have great potentials as flexible actuators in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) due to their large deformation, light weight, mechanical compliancy, and low cost. The low dielectric constant of these elastomers requires a rather high voltage electric field, which has greatly limited their applications. In this work, a diaphragm-type flexible microactuator comprising a hyperbranched aromatic polyamide functionalized graphene (HAPFG) filler embedded into the polyurethane (PU) dielectric elastomer matrix is described. The rational designed HAPFG sheets exhibits uniform dispersion in PU matrix and strong adhesion with the matrix by hydrogen-bond coupling. Consequently, the HAPFG-PU composites possess high dielectric performance and low loss modulus. The effect of hyperbranched aromatic polyamide functionalized graphene on high voltage electric field induced strain was experimentally investigated using the Fotonic sensor. The high electric field response of the composite was discussed by applying different kinds of alternating-current field. In addition, a comparison of the breakdown strength between the HAPFG-PU composite and the pure PU was carried out.