Fully printable, plasticized fluorinated terpolymers for active mirror morphing control
Fabrication additive de terpolymères fluorés plastifiés pour contrôle actif de la morphologie de miroirs
Résumé
Electroactive polymers (EAPs) have recently showed promising potential in various
applications especially for electromechanical conversion such as low-frequency actuation, for instance
micropumps or long stroke actuators. These polymers reach large strain response to an electric field, making them
good candidates as low frequency active actuators. According to electrostrictive figure of merits, Fluorinated
terpolymer P(VDF-TrFE-CFE/CTFE), which has been investigated in this study, is considered as a semicrystalline polymer possessing the highest level of conversion from electrical to mechanical energy thanks to its
excellent dielectric permittivity (εr ~ 50) and high mechanical modulus (~ 200 MPa). However, significant
electrical field should be required (E > 100V/µm) to obtain high strain level (> 2%). An organic modification of
the terpolymer enables an important increase of the electrostrictive strain under low applied electric field as well
an increase of the mechanical energy compared to the neat polymer. Indeed, this simple blending allows to benefit
the exceptional properties of the terpolymer at an electric field of 5.5 times lower than the one of the pure
terpolymer. In addition, the proposed modification has a reduced effect on the dielectric strength of the EAP with
respect to conventional inorganic/organic composites. Furthermore, the process is relatively cheap, industrially
used and could potentially break a technological lock as the performance recorded at low electric field are greater
than any conventional electroactive polymer. New results of the IEC Pathfinder LiveMirror project (FEM
simulations and proof of concept) will be presented as an example of application of this new polymer blend.