Morphology of Voltage-Triggered Ordered Wrinkles of a Dielectric Elastomer Sheet

Wrinkles widely existing in sheets and membranes have attracted a lot of attention in the fields of material science and engineering applications. In this paper, we present a new method to generate ordered (striplike) and steady wrinkles of a constrained dielectric elastomer (DE) sheet coated with soft electrodes on both sides subjected to high voltage. When the voltage reaches a certain value, wrinkles will nucleate and grow. We conduct both experimental and theoretical studies to investigate the wavelength and amplitude of the wrinkle. The results show a good agreement between theory and experiment. Moreover, the amplitude and wavelength of ordered wrinkles can be tuned by varying the prestretch and geometry of the DE sheet, as well as the applying voltage. This study can help future design of DE transducers such as diffraction grating and optical sensor.