Abstract
In the green transition, actuators and generators play an essential role in the development of sustainable solutions across a broad range of applications. In this context, dielectric transducers are advocated as one of the most promising solutions in terms of effectiveness, lifetime and running costs. However, they are classically produced as sandwich structures, whereby a cross-linked dielectric material is placed between two compliant electrodes. From a materials consumption viewpoint, this is problematic, since it will inherently result in a loss of material during production as well as inhibit the recycling of expended systems when their life comes to an end. Herein, we present a cleaning method employing surfactants and sonication to remove electrodes from the surface of the dielectric material. By applying a thermoplastic silicone elastomer as the dielectric material, it is possible to reprocess the material by hot-pressing, and to prepare new actuators after the rinsing process. This effectively shows that recycling production scrap, for example, is possible. By comparing the cleaned material with a directly recycled material, it is clear that cleaning removes a critical amount of metals from the material and enables recycling for at least five cycles. Comparatively, a directly recycled material is prone to a high leakage current and premature electronic breakdown after only two cycles. This simple cleaning process, in combination with use of a thermoplastic dielectric material, enables less waste from production as well as the possibility of reclaiming and recycling materials in general.
Highlights
Dielectric transducers (DETs) hold great potential for several applications within the green transition, through both enabling lower power consumption devices such as pumps and so robotics in actuators (DEAs) and their application in energyharvesting devices and applications such as generators.[1–4] the implementation of DETs in commodity products raises questions in relation to their sustainability and environmental impacts
We prepared a thermoplastic PDMS (TP-PDMS) elastomer based on the dual associative nature of a cross-linked network by urea and urea-adjacent ureidopyrimidone (UPy) units (number-averaged molecular weights (Mn): 134 000 g molÀ1, Fig. 1).[11]
The TP-PDMS was hot-pressed into a disc at a thickness of 1 mm and sputter-coated with 10 nm silver electrodes to produce a simple planar dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA)
Summary
Dielectric transducers (DETs) hold great potential for several applications within the green transition, through both enabling lower power consumption devices such as pumps and so robotics in actuators (DEAs) and their application in energyharvesting devices and applications such as generators.[1–4] the implementation of DETs in commodity products raises questions in relation to their sustainability and environmental impacts. DETs are typically prepared as sandwich structures, where an elastomer is cross-linked between two compliant electrodes. Since the central dielectric materials of most DETs are based on covalently cross-linked elastomers, their recycling requires the breaking of covalent bonds to make them reprocessable,[5] and any failure in manufacture currently results in creating waste that cannot be recycled. We investigate a potential recycling process for DEAs in a realistic con guration, i.e. a thermoplastic PDMS elastomer sandwiched between two silver electrodes. Conductive metals such as silver have been demonstrated as compliant electrodes for DEAs, either due to corrugated surfaces or to nanostructuring of the metals.[19–21]. Potentially the presented recycling method may be applied as a general means to recycle the DEAs, including the ones with carbon-based electrodes
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