Dielectric and Insulating Properties of an Acrylic DEA Material at High near-DC Electric Fields L. Di Lillo a , A. Schmidt bc , A. Bergamini c , P. Ermanni a , E. Mazza bc a ETH Zurich, Centre for Structure Technologies, Leonhardstrasse 27, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland; b ETH Zurich, Institute for Mechanical Systems, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland; c Empa, Materials Science and Technology, berlandstrasse 129, 8600 D¨ ubendorf, Switzerland; ABSTRACT A number of adaptive structure applications call for the generation of intense electric fields (in excess of 70 MV/m). Such intense fields across the thickness of a thin polymer dielectric layer are typically used to exploit the direct electromechanical coupling in the form of a Maxwell stress: σ ij = - 1 2 · ǫ · ǫ 0 · V 2 d 2   1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 -1   (1) Where V/d is the applied field, ǫ 0 is the permittivity of vacuum and ǫ is the relative permittivity of the material. The field that can be applied to the dielectric is limited by the dielectric strength of the material. Below the limit set by the breakdown, the material is generally assumed to have a field independent dielectric constant and to be a perfect insulator, i.e. to have an infinite volume resistivity. While extensive investigationsabout the mechanical properties of the materials used for electronic Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEA) are available from literature, the results of the investigation of the insulating and dielectric properties of these materials, especially under conditions (electric field and frequency) similar to the ones encountered during operation are not available. In the present contribution, we present a method and a set-up for the measurement of the electric properties of thin polymer films, such as the ones used for the fabrication of electronic DEAs, under conditions close to operations. The method and setup where developed to investigate the properties of ’stiff’ thin polymer films, such as Polyimide or Polyvinylidenefluoride, used for Electro-Bonded Laminates (EBLs). The properties of the well known VHB 4910 acrylic elastomer are presented to illustrate how the permittivity and the leakage current can be measured as a function of the electric field and the deformation state, using the proposed set-up. The material properties were measured on membranes under different fixed pre-stretch conditions (λ 1 , λ 2 =3, 4, 5), in order to eliminate effects due to the change in sample geometry, using gold sputtered electrodes, 20nm thick. The values obtained for the permittivity of the material are in good agreement with the work of other authors. The dissipative properties revealed by the measurements performed at high fields, similar to the ones encountered in operation, indicate that this less investigated aspect of VHB needs to be taken in consideration for real world applications. Keywords: Dielectric elastomer actuators, acrylic elastomers, dielectric properties, insulating properties 1. INTRODUCTION Unlike materials such as piezoelectrics, DEAs and EBLs exploit electrostatic field in a direct way, namely as the Coulomb force between the charges that have been separated by applying a potential across the dielectric. In the case of DEAs, the dielectric is highly compliant and deforms due to the Maxwell stress applied to it, as shown in figure 1a, thus transforms part of the energy stored in the electrostatic field into mechanical energy. The actuation behavior of DEAs is governed by the mechanical properties as well as the dielectric properties of the dielectric, whereas the stress is given by equation 1 and the consequent deformation is described by the mechanical constitutive equation of the material. Further author information: (Send correspondence to Andrea Bergamini) Andrea Bergamini: E-mail: andrea.bergamini@empa.ch, Telephone: 41 58 765 4424 Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2011, edited by Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Federico Carpi, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7976, 79763B · © 2011 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/11/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.894558 Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7976 79763B-1 Downloaded from SPIE Digital Library on 23 Jun 2011 to 129.132.208.2. Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms EMPA20110268