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28 March 2011Lifetime of dielectric elastomer stack actuators
Dielectric elastomer stack actuators (DESA) are well suited for the use in mobile devices, fluidic applications
and small electromechanical systems. Despite many improvements during the last years the long term behavior
of dielectric elastomer actuators in general is not known or has not been published.
The first goal of the study is to characterize the overall lifetime under laboratory conditions and to identify
potential factors influencing lifetime. For this we have designed a test setup to examine 16 actuators at once.
The actuators are subdivided into 4 groups each with a separate power supply and driving signal. To monitor
the performance of the actuators driving voltage and current are measured continuously and additionally, the
amplitude of the deformations of each actuator is measured sequentially.
From our first results we conclude that lifetime of these actuators is mainly influenced by the contact material
between feeding line and multilayer electrodes. So far, actuators themselves are not affected by long term
actuation. With the best contact material actuators can be driven for more than 2700 h at 200 Hz with an
electrical field strength of 20 V/μm. This results in more than 3 billion cycles. Actually, there are further
actuators driven at 10 Hz for more than 4000 hours and still working.
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Peter Lotz, Marc Matysek, Helmut F. Schlaak, "Lifetime of dielectric elastomer stack actuators," Proc. SPIE 7976, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2011, 79760P (28 March 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.878954