Rapid Fabrication Method for Soft Devices Using Off‐the‐Shelf Conductive and Dielectric Acrylic Elastomers. (17th November 2020) - Kanno, Ryo
Abstract : Herein, a method to fabricate soft and stretchable devices rapidly by using only commercially available conductive and dielectric elastomer materials with the aid of laser cutting and a layer‐by‐layer process is presented. The conductive acrylic elastomer is first characterized in terms of its mechanical and electrical characteristics and then applied to various devices, such as soft electrostatic actuators, strain sensors, and stretchable pumps. These devices, which can be fabricated within 15–30 min, exhibit areal actuated strains of up to 163.0 ± 1.0% at 4 kV in the actuators, a highly linear response ( R 2 = 0.995) for strains of up to 100% with a gauge factor of 0.98 in the sensors, and an output pressure of 0.11 ± 0.08 kPa and flow rate of 20 ± 4 μL s −1 at 7 kV in the pumps. These performance characteristics are comparable to those reported in the literature. To demonstrate the potential for soft robotic applications, a wearable device is developed (fabrication time of ≈15 min), which exhibits multiple functionalities, such as detection of deformations of a human finger, haptic presentation through vibration, and electroadhesion. The results illustrate the high applicability of the presented strategy in soft intelligent systems. Abstract : A rapid method for fabricating soft and stretchable devices using off‐the‐shelf elastomeric materials is presented. This method enables the fabrication of various devices, such as soft electrostatic actuators, strain sensors, stretchable pumps, and a wearable device, within 15–30 min. These devices exhibit comparable performance to those reported in the literature, indicating a high applicability of the presented strategy.