Tunable electromechanical actuation in silicone dielectric film

Dielectric elastomer actuator films were fabricated on transparent conductive electrode using bi-component poly(dimethyl)siloxane (PDMS). PDMS is a well-known material in microfluidics and soft lithography for biomedical applications, being easy to process, low cost, biocompatible and transparent. Moreover its mechanical properties can be easily tuned by varying the mixing ratio between the oligomer base and the crosslinking agent. In this work we investigate the chemical composition and the electromechanical properties of PDMS thin film verifying for the first time the tuneable actuation response by simply modifying the amount of the curing agent. We demonstrate that, for a 20:1 ratio of base:crosslinker mixture, a striking 150% enhancement of Maxwell strain occurs at 1 Hz actuating frequency. (paper)