Harnessing Snap-Through Instability in Soft Dielectrics to Achieve Giant Voltage-Triggered Deformation
A soft dielectric membrane is prone to snap-through instability. We present theory and experiment to show that the instability can be harnessed to achieve giant voltage-triggered deformation. We mount a membrane on a chamber of a suitable volume, pressurize the membrane into a state near the verge of the instability, and apply a voltage to trigger the snap without causing electrical breakdown. For an acrylic membrane we demonstrate voltage-triggered expansion of area by 1692%, far beyond the largest value reported in the literature. The large expansion can even be retained after the voltage is switched off.
Author(s): | Christoph Keplinger and Tiefeng Li and Richard Baumgartner and Zhigang Suo and Siegfried Bauer |
Journal: | Soft Matter |
Volume: | 8 |
Number (issue): | 2 |
Pages: | 285--288 |
Year: | 2012 |
Month: | October |
Bibtex Type: | Article (article) |
DOI: | 10.1039/C1SM06736B |
State: | Published |
Electronic Archiving: | grant_archive |
BibTex
@article{Keplinger12-SM-SoftDielectrics, title = {Harnessing Snap-Through Instability in Soft Dielectrics to Achieve Giant Voltage-Triggered Deformation}, journal = {Soft Matter}, abstract = {A soft dielectric membrane is prone to snap-through instability. We present theory and experiment to show that the instability can be harnessed to achieve giant voltage-triggered deformation. We mount a membrane on a chamber of a suitable volume, pressurize the membrane into a state near the verge of the instability, and apply a voltage to trigger the snap without causing electrical breakdown. For an acrylic membrane we demonstrate voltage-triggered expansion of area by 1692%, far beyond the largest value reported in the literature. The large expansion can even be retained after the voltage is switched off.}, volume = {8}, number = {2}, pages = {285--288}, month = oct, year = {2012}, slug = {keplinger12-sm-softdielectrics}, author = {Keplinger, Christoph and Li, Tiefeng and Baumgartner, Richard and Suo, Zhigang and Bauer, Siegfried}, month_numeric = {10} }