Silicone-Based Membranes as Potential Materials for Dielectric Electroactive Polymer Actuators

This article includes an overview of the materials and a thorough analysis of the methods that are used to produce dielectric electroactive actuator membranes. The paper also presents extensive results from our experimental studies on two types of addition silicone (Silicone Mold Start 15 and Dragon Skin 10M) that are used to manufacture actuators with different active membranes of thicknesses (165 μm and 300 μm, respectively). This study explored in depth the hardware architectures and methodologies for manufacturing the selected actuators. The displacements of the actuators were compared to their responses to two types of voltage excitation: a step response and a sinusoidal signal with an increasing frequency over time. This paper graphically presents the results that we obtained for all devices, with a particular emphasis on the resonance frequencies. When comparing membranes that had the same thickness (165 μm), it was found that the mean amplitude was higher for silicone membranes with lower values for the Young’s modulus (DS = 0.57 mm and MS = 0.73 mm). All experiments were repeated for two series of measurements and the results that were obtained in this study demonstrated the successful implementation of the actuator concepts that were made from the new types of silicone, which have not yet been used for production.