electromechanical actuators

Published in ACS Nano: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.6b05545

Electroactive soft elastomers require huge electric field for a meaningful actuation. We demonstrate, by means of numerical simulation, that this can be dramatically reduced and large deformations can be achieved with suitably designed heterogeneous actuators. The mechanism by which the enhancement is attained is illustrated with the aid of both idealized and periodic models.