Composition and annealing effects on the response of electrostrictive graft elastomers

摘要

The electrostrictive graft elastomer is a new type of electromechanically active polymer developed by NASA. The material has demonstrated promising electromechanical properties including large electrical field induced strain, high electromechanical output, and a relatively high mechanical modulus. As a two-component system, the elastomer contains flexible backbone chains and electro-responsive polar grafted crystal domains. The two-component material system enables optimization of the electrostriction by controlling the relative fraction of the two components and the molecular morphology. The present work is a systematic study on the effects of the relative fraction of the two components and morphology on the electrical field induced strain. The results show that the elastomer containing more polar grafted domains and higher crystallinity yields higher electric field-induced strains.