High Performance Electroactive Polymers and Nano-composites for Artificial Muscles

¹ Materials Research Institute and Electrical Engineering Department, The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802, USA
² Materials Research and Education Center, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

Electroactive polymers with high dielectric constant (K) can generate a large strain response under an electric field and they are promising candidate materials for artificial muscles. By introducing carefully controlled defects, normal ferroelectric polymer poly (vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE)] can be converted into a relaxor ferroelectric material with electrostrictive strain up to 7% and room temperature dielectric constant above 50. These defects can be created by either high-energy electron irradiation or copolymerization with a third bulky comonomer chlorofluoroethylene. Furthermore, giant K can be achieved in all-polymer percolative composites with organic semiconductor copper-phthalocyanine or conducting polymer as the filler. The recently developed nano-composites have K up to 1000 and electromechanical strain above 10%.

Key Words: electroactive polymers, poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene), dielectric constant, electromechanical response, nano-composites

First published on May 17, 2006, doi:10.1177/1045389X06063341

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 2007;18:133.

A more recent version of this article appeared on February 1, 2007


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