Investigation of the Adhesion Properties of Laminated Multilayer-Actuators Based on DEAP Material

Transducers based on dielectric electroactive polymers (DEAP) gained a lot of attention within the last years. By applying an electric field, the elastomer material, coated with compliant electrodes on its opposing surfaces, deforms. Due to this electromechanical coupling DEAP transducers are predestined for generator and actuator applications. However, to increase the absolute energy gain or the actuation, multilayer DEAP transducers are used. To withstand tensile forces a reliable adhesion between the single layers of the transducer is mandatory. If the transducer is made from high-quality pre-fabricated polymer films it is preferable to laminate the layers without glue in order to keep the processing steps simple and fast. Therefore, within this publication the adhesion between the material surfaces is theoretically and experimentally investigated. For this purpose, different adhesion theories are studied based on the properties of polymers. In particular, the adsorption theory is theoretically considered in more detail and used to determine the surface energy experimentally for different elastomer materials. By using the obtained surface energies, models are derived to describe the adhesion between them. Finally, the adhesion is experimentally investigated by corresponding experiments.