Electrically Responsive Multilayer Soft Actuators Using a Solvent-Free High Dielectric Permittivity Polysiloxane Ink

Abstract

Multilayer soft dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) consist of stacked elastic capacitors that convert electrical energy into mechanical work. The generated mechanical work and force can be increased by reducing the dielectric layer thickness, increasing the material's dielectric permittivity, or increasing the number of layers. Despite major progress in developing high-permittivity elastomers, integrating these materials into multilayer devices remains challenging. To date, large-scale production of stack DEAs has been achieved only with commercial polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which has a low dielectric permittivity of about 3. Here, we report a solvent-free, high-dielectric-permittivity capillary ink that combines a pot life of more than 300 days at -30 °C, good processability comparable to that of commercial PDMS, and rapid thermal crosslinking, fulfilling essential criteria for the industrial-scale fabrication of stack actuators. The ink wets a preheated metal substrate at 100 °C to form highly uniform ultrathin films that cross-link in just 2 minutes. The resulting elastomer exhibits a dielectric permittivity of 11 at 10 Hz, a storage modulus of 350 kPa, and negligible mechanical losses. Single-layer circular DEAs exhibit a 5.7% lateral strain at 26.2 V µm⁻¹ and a stable actuation over 5000 cycles at 24.7 V µm⁻¹. At an electric field of 19.0 V µm⁻¹, a stripe actuator exhibits 5.5% lateral strain and 1 Hz, which increased to 9% at 5 Hz. The actuators respond to a low voltage of 500 V, corresponding to 25 V µm-1, and provide fast, reversible actuation with a displacement of 25 µm. These results demonstrate a scalable route to high-performance DEAs, marking a significant step towards the industrial application of high-dielectric permittivity polysiloxanes.