Development of Dielectric Elastomer Actuator Arrays with Enhanced Vertical Deformation via Dimple-Like Architectures
발표자
오동근 (한국화학연구원)
연구책임자
정성묵 (한국화학연구원)
공동저자
오동근 (한국화학연구원), 정성묵 (한국화학연구원)
초록
내용
Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) offer a route toward biomimetic artificial muscle systems capable of distributed and reflexive actuation. Achieving large vertical deformation in miniaturized units without electrical breakdown remains challenging. Here, we present a scalable fabrication strategy in which PU-based silver paste slurry electrodes are directly printed on TPU films and shaped via thermo-compression forming using 3D-printed molds, followed by curing. This approach enables accurate three-dimensional shaping of a dimple-like dielectric shell while suppressing dielectric breakdown. As a result, a miniaturized DEA unit with an area below 25 mm² achieves vertical displacements exceeding 1 mm at applied voltages above 5 kV without electrical shorting. This miniaturization facilitates high-density array integration and multi-modal deformation, providing a hardware foundation for decentralized, neuron-like actuation systems inspired by biological muscle networks.