Polyvinyl chloride-based dielectric elastomer with high permittivity and low viscoelasticity for actuation and sensing.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36932099.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-37178-5 and PMC identifier 10023783.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Dielectric elastomers (DEs) are widely used in soft actuation and sensing. Current DE actuators require high driving electrical fields because of their low permittivity. Most of DE actuators and sensors suffer from high viscoelastic effects, leading to high mechanical loss and large shifts of signals. This study demonstrates a valuable strategy to produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-based elastomers with high permittivity and low viscoelasticity. The introduction of cyanoethyl cellulose (CEC) into plasticized PVC gel (PVCg) not only confers a high dielectric permittivity (18.9@1 kHz) but also significantly mitigates their viscoelastic effects with a low mechanical loss (0.04@1 Hz). The CEC/PVCg actuators demonstrate higher actuation performances over the existing DE actuators under low electrical fields and show marginal displacement shifts (7.78%) compared to VHB 4910 (136.09%). The CEC/PVCg sensors display high sensitivity, fast response, and limited signal drifts, enabling their faithful monitoring of multiple human motions.