John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
Nat Commun. 2019 Jan 14;10(1):183. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-08094-w.
Exceptionally large strains can be produced in soft elastomers by the application of an electric field and the strains can be exploited for a variety of novel actuators, such as tunable lenses and tactile actuators. However, shape morphing with dielectric elastomers has not been possible since no generalizable method for changing their Gaussian curvature has been devised. Here it is shown that this fundamental limitation can be lifted by introducing internal, spatially varying electric fields through a layer-by-layer fabrication method incorporating shaped, carbon-nanotubes-based electrodes between thin elastomer sheets. To illustrate the potential of the method, voltage-tunable negative and positive Gaussian curvatures shapes are produced. Furthermore, by applying voltages to different sets of internal electrodes, the shapes can be re-configured. All the shape changes are reversible when the voltage is removed.
通过施加电场，可以在软弹性体中产生非常大的应变，并且可以利用这些应变来制造各种新型执行器，例如可调谐透镜和触觉执行器。然而，由于没有设计出用于改变其高斯曲率的通用方法，因此使用介电弹性体进行形状变形是不可能的。在这里，通过使用一种逐层制造方法，在薄的弹性体薄片之间引入具有形状的基于碳纳米管的电极，可以引入内部、空间变化的电场，从而克服了这一基本限制。为了说明该方法的潜力，产生了电压可调的负和正高斯曲率形状。此外，通过向不同组的内部电极施加电压，可以对形状进行重新配置。当电压移除时，所有形状变化都是可逆的。
