Electrospinning Processing Techniques for the Manufacturing of Composite Dielectric Elastomer Fibers.

Mirella Ramirez,Jacob L Meyer,Chiu Law,Louis Vaught,Rani Elhajjar

doi:10.3390/ma14216288

Mirella Ramirez, Jacob L Meyer + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14216288

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Abstract

Dielectric elastomers (DE) are novel composite architectures capable of large actuation strains and the ability to be formed into a variety of actuator configurations. However, the high voltage requirement of DE actuators limits their applications for a variety of applications. Fiber actuators composed of DE fibers are particularly attractive as they can be formed into artificial muscle architectures. The interest in manufacturing micro or nanoscale DE fibers is increasing due to the possible applications in tissue engineering, filtration, drug delivery, catalysis, protective textiles, and sensors. Drawing, self-assembly, template-direct synthesis, and electrospinning processing have been explored to manufacture these fibers. Electrospinning has been proposed because of its ability to produce sub-mm diameter size fibers. In this paper, we investigate the impact of electrospinning parameters on the production of composite dielectric elastomer fibers. In an electrospinning setup, an electrostatic field is applied to a viscous polymer solution at an electrode’s tip. The polymer composite with carbon black and carbon nanotubes is expelled and accelerated towards a collector. Factors that are considered in this study include polymer concentration, solution viscosity, flow rate, electric field intensity, and the distance to the collector.

Highlights

Dielectric elastomers (DE) are novel composite architectures capable of large actuation strains and the ability to be formed into a variety of actuator configurations
Fiber actuators composed of DE fibers are attractive as they can be formed into artificial muscle architectures to realize high actuation forces and potentially large displacements [1]
We show the effect of the distance at the collector, viscosity, the applied voltage on the fiber radius, and angular aperture in the Figures 4–10

Summary

Introduction

Dielectric elastomers (DE) are novel composite architectures capable of large actuation strains and the ability to be formed into a variety of actuator configurations. Fiber actuators composed of DE fibers are attractive as they can be formed into artificial muscle architectures to realize high actuation forces and potentially large displacements [1]. DE fibers have several important advantages with respect to potential device concepts using artificial muscles. These include rapid response time (on the scale of millisecond), the ability to hold strains under DC activation, can induce relatively large actuation forces, have high mechanical energy densities, and that they can be operated at room temperature for large numbers of cycles [2,3]. The electrospinning technique was previously used to produce nanofibers with a diameter less than 40 nm [17], and uniaxially aligned nanofibers were fabricated with a variation of the electrospinning process [18]

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