Inkjet printing and characterization of applied electrodes for dielectric elastomer transducer

Çabuk, Ozan; Wegener, Michael; Grüber, Björn; Seidel, Sven-Oliver; Maas, Jürgen

doi:10.1117/12.2558545

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…These whitish areas occupy a large portion of the substrate, resulting in high strip resistance (146 MΩ). By contrast, more CB particles are accumulated in the area (darker) indicated with yellow arrows, which might be due to the coffee ring effect 34,41 . It can also be seen that CB particles were deposited more uniformly in the "green channel" region.…”

Section: Resistance and Morphology Of The Inkjet-printed Electrodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, no soft matrices were included in these inkjet printing ink recipes to reduce the electrode stiffness. Çabuk et al 34 tried to modify a commercial conductive polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/CB paste for inkjet printing, but the ink was only stable up for two hours. The challenge here is the difficulty of finding one "common solvent" that is able to not only disperse the conductive fillers but also dissolve the matrices to form a stable ink; meanwhile, the ink has to show good printability (good drop formation).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of the soft matrices in dielectric elastomer actuator electrodes on their actuation performance

Shamraienko

Eychmüller

et al. 2023

Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) XXV

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Dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) based flexible and stretchable electronics have attracted considerable attention over the past decades. The electrode components play an important role in the DEA performance. In this work, we studied how the incorporation of soft matrices in the electrodes affects the DEA actuation. The ultrasonic spraying was used to fabricate multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) based electrodes for DEA. The results indicated that the addition of a water-soluble block polymer and silicone gel (acting as the soft matrices) could improve the actuation of the DEA with neat MWCNT electrodes by ~10% and ~24%, respectively. An inkjet printing ink, consisting of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), carbon black (CB) and chlorobenzene, was further developed. The stability, particle size, resistance, and morphology of 1-3 printing layers were characterized. The DEA with the inkjet-printed CB/PDMS electrodes showed 50% area stain at 2500 V, which is higher than the actuation with neat CB powder or CNT electrodes reported previously. Both results of the ultrasonic spraying and inkjet printing confirmed that the incorporation of soft matrices in the electrodes is helpful for DEA actuation.

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Section: Resistance and Morphology Of The Inkjet-printed Electrodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the soft matrices in dielectric elastomer actuator electrodes on their actuation performance

Shamraienko

Eychmüller

et al. 2023

Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) XXV

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“…DEAs with single-wall CNT (SWCNT) electrodes 12 and CB grease electrodes 11 have been reported achieving ∼200 and 233% area strain (in plane), respectively. Compared to CNT, CB is easy to stabilize in solvents, cheaper, and nontoxic, and thereby, it is most commonly used in recent works 20 and may be a good candidate for mass production of DEA electrodes in the future.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, we attempt to use a small nozzle (dimension: 17 × 17 μm) to achieve finer features, which will be useful to print electronics on a smaller scale. Most currently used inkjet printers are integrated with relatively bigger nozzles, ranging from 30 to 100 μm, ,, and nozzle sizes smaller than 30 μm, such as 21.5 μm, are rarely reported for CB-based inks. This is because smaller nozzles will narrow the printing window in terms of the surface tension, viscosity, and particle size of inks, thus limiting the choices of proper printable materials .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizations and Inkjet Printing of Carbon Black Electrodes for Dielectric Elastomer Actuators

Yi,

Babick,

Strobel

et al. 2023

ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces

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Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have been proposed as a promising technology for developing soft robotics and stretchable electronics due to their large actuation. Among available fabrication techniques, inkjet printing is a digital, maskfree, material-saving, and fast technology, making it versatile and appealing for fabricating DEA electrodes. However, there is still a lack of suitable materials for inkjet-printed electrodes. In this study, multiple carbon black (CB) inks were developed and tested as DEA electrodes inkjet-printed on acrylic membranes (VHB). Triethylene glycol monomethyl ether (TGME) and chlorobenzene (CLB) were selected to disperse CB. The inks' stability, particle size, surface tension, viscosity, electrical resistance, and printability were characterized. The DEA with Ink-TGME/CLB (mixture solvent) electrodes obtained 80.63% area strain, a new benchmark for the DEA actuation with CB powder electrodes on VHB. The novelty of this work involves the disclosure of a new ink recipe (TGME/CLB/CB) for inkjet printing that can obtain stable drop formations with a small nozzle (17 × 17 μm), high resolution (∼25 μm, approaching the limit of drop-on-demand inkjet printing), and the largest area strain of DEAs under similar conditions, distinguishing this contribution from the previous works, which is important for the fabrication and miniaturization of DEA-based soft and stretchable electronics.

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“…Cabuk et al developed a printable ink for DEA electrodes by diluting a commercial conductive carbon-loaded silicone. [52] As an example of multimaterial printing of dielectric elastomer transducers, Wilkinson et al recently reported multilayer printed sensors using electrohydrodynamic printing for silicone layers and aerosol jet printing of a commercial graphene platelet ink for the electrodes. [53] Although Wilkinson et al demonstrated the printing of the two main components (electrodes and membrane) of a dielectric elastomer transducer, the pressure sensor application used in the study is less demanding compared with actuators, as it doesn't require the layers to withstand high voltage or the electrodes to stretch more than a few percent.…”

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confidence: 99%

Inkjet Printing of Complex Soft Machines with Densely Integrated Electrostatic Actuators

Schlatter

Grasso

Rosset

et al. 2020

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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Soft machines consist of distributed and interconnected actuators, sensors, logic elements, and ideally a power supply, integrated in a stretchable body. Their intrinsic compliance makes them interesting for a wide array of applications, from soft robotics [1] to organs on a chip. [2] The field has seen rapid growth, in view of the versatility of soft machines, [3] their ability to replicate animal-like motion, [4-7] their intrinsic safety for human interactions, [1] resilience, [8-10] and the ability to use material compliance and elasticity as a means to both simplify control and add function. [11] Given the highly integrated nature of complex soft machines, and the need for many different materials for functional and structural elements, additive manufacturing is an appealing method both to create soft machines with multiple independent actuators and to rapidly tailor dimensions, material properties, and device functions to different tasks. [12,13] As a fully printed soft machine requires no assembly, circuits and systems too complex for manual fabrication and assembly become possible. Printing has allowed complex soft structures with advanced materials, [14] but the focus to date has been mostly on pneumatic structures (i.e., printed chambers) and strain sensors for soft robot end effectors. [12,15] With a few exceptions such as the Octobot, [16] liquid-crystal artificial cilia, [17] or ionic electroactive polymers, [18-20] nearly all printed actuators are pneumatically driven fluidic elastomer actuator (FEAs) devices requiring external air pressure connections to inflate or deflate the bladders. [1,21] Fluidic actuation requires elastomers with well-defined channels but needs no electrical elements. In contrast, including electrically operated actuators embeds the electromechanical conversion into the device and reduces the number of external components. However, it adds important requirements, such as printing magnetic materials or metal coils for electromagnetic actuation, resistive tracks for Joule heating, or dielectrics with a high electrical breakdown, absence of pin holes, and the need for high thickness uniformity if electrostatic actuation is used. Actuators with embedded electrical actuation have been realized using printing processes, either partially printed in combination with additional fabrication methods or fully printed. The first category includes ionic electroactive polymers actuators, with printed polymer layers, but metallic electrodes deposited by other methods. [18,20] The second category includes hybrid pneumatic and shape memory polymer actuators with integrated Joule heating [22] or fully printed ionic microactuators. [19] In this work, we use inkjet printing to produce complex soft machines with integrated electrostatic zipping actuators in a single process. We use a three-material printing process which

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Inkjet printing and characterization of applied electrodes for dielectric elastomer transducer

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Effects of the soft matrices in dielectric elastomer actuator electrodes on their actuation performance

Effects of the soft matrices in dielectric elastomer actuator electrodes on their actuation performance

Characterizations and Inkjet Printing of Carbon Black Electrodes for Dielectric Elastomer Actuators

Inkjet Printing of Complex Soft Machines with Densely Integrated Electrostatic Actuators

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