Self-healing fluidic dielectric elastomer actuator

Abstract

Soft actuator with a large deflection range and a high degree of reliability is essential for microfluidic applications. This paper presents a self-healing fluidic dielectric elastomer actuator (SFDEA) fabricated using ecoflex 00–30. An SFDEA consist of an elastomeric shell filled with dielectric fluid and sandwiched between two compliant electrodes, which actuates when subject to a high voltage. A maximum deflection of 0.72 mm was reported during design simulation at 10 kV applied voltage, with an average of 0.7 mm deflection at higher voltages. Furthermore, at a low operating frequency of 0.5 Hz, the dynamic response deflection of each repeating actuation cycle has attained a high level of reliability. By measuring the effective deflection at each frequency cycle, the device’s performance has been assessed.