All-organic electrostrictive polymer composites with low driving electrical voltages for micro-fluidic pump applications

作者：Minh Quyen Le; Capsal Jean Fabien^*; Galineau Jeremy; Ganet Florent; Yin Xunqian; Yang Mingchia; Chateaux Jean Francois; Renaud Louis; Malhaire Christophe; Cottinet Pierre Jean; Liang Richard

来源：Scientific Reports, 2015, 5(1): 11814.

DOI：10.1038/srep11814

This paper focuses on the improvement of a relaxor ferroelectric terpolymer, i.e., poly (vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)], filled with a bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP). The developed material gave rise to a significantly increased longitudinal electrostrictive strain, as well as an increased mechanical energy density under a relatively low electric field. These features were attributed to the considerably enhanced dielectric permittivity and a decreased Young modulus as a result of the introduction of only small DEHP plasticizer molecules. In addition, the plasticizer-filled terpolymer only exhibited a slight decrease of the dielectric breakdown strength, which was a great advantage with respect to the traditional polymer-based electrostrictive composites. More importantly, the approach proposed herein is promising for the future development and scale-up of new high-performance electrostrictive dielectrics under low applied electrical fields through modification simply by blending with a low-cost plasticizer. An experimental demonstration based on a flexible micro-fluidic application is described at the end of this paper, confirming the attractive characteristics of the proposed materials as well as the feasibility of integrating them as micro-actuators in small-scale devices.

• 出版日期2015-7-3