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Dielectric elastomer switches for smart

artificial muscles
ARTICLE in APPLIED PHYSICS A AUGUST 2010
Impact Factor: 1.69 DOI: 10.1007/s00339-010-5857-z

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Sheng Quan Xie

Callaghan Innovation

University of Auckland

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Appl Phys A
DOI 10.1007/s00339-010-5857-z

R A P I D C O M M U N I C AT I O N

Dielectric elastomer switches for smart artificial muscles

Benjamin M. OBrien Emilio P. Calius
Tokushu Inamura Sheng Q. Xie Iain A. Anderson

Received: 27 April 2010 / Accepted: 7 June 2010

Springer-Verlag 2010

Abstract Some of the most exciting possibilities for dielectric elastomer artificial muscles consist of biologically inspired networks of smart actuators working towards common goals. However, the creation of these networks will
only be realised once intelligence and feedback can be fully
distributed throughout an artificial muscle device. Here we
show that dielectric elastomer artificial muscles can be built
with intrinsic sensor, control, and driver circuitry, bringing
them closer in capability to their natural analogues. This was
achieved by exploiting the piezoresistive behaviour of the
actuators highly compliant electrodes using what we have
called the dielectric elastomer switch. We developed suitable switching material using carbon loaded silicone grease
and experimentally demonstrated the primitives required for
self-sensing actuators and digital computation, namely compliant electromechanical NAND gates and oscillator circuits. We anticipate that dielectric elastomer switches will
reduce the need for bulky and rigid external circuitry as well
B.M. OBrien () T. Inamura I.A. Anderson
The Biomimetics Laboratory of the Auckland Bioengineering
Institute, The University of Auckland, Level 6 Uniservices House,
70 Symonds Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
e-mail: ben.obrien@auckland.ac.nz
E.P. Calius
Industrial Research Limited, Brooke House, 24 Balfour Road,
P.O. Box 2225, Auckland 1140, New Zealand
S.Q. Xie
Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering,
The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland Mail
Centre, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
I.A. Anderson
Department of Engineering Science, School of Engineering, The
University of Auckland, Level 3 Uniservices House, 70 Symonds
Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand

as provide the simple distributed intelligence required for

soft, biologically inspired networks of actuators. Examples
include many-degree-of-freedom robotic hearts, intestines,
and manipulators; wearable assistive devices; smart sensor
skins and fabrics; and ultimately new types of artificial muscle embedded, electromechanical computers.

1 Introduction
Artificial muscles based on Dielectric Elastomer Actuator(s)
(DEA) [1, 2] are attractive for a wide range of applications
for reasons such as their large active strains and self-sensing
ability [38]. DEA are flexible capacitors formed from compliant dielectrics and electrodes. When charged, Coulombic
attraction gives rise to thickness compression and planar expansion of the actuator. These electrostatic forces are described in (1) as a Maxwell Pressure [1, 2, 9], where P is
the active stress in the thickness direction, V is the voltage,
t is the thickness, and o and r and respectively the absolute
and relative permittivities. Thus actuation of artificial muscles can be controlled through applied voltage or charge.

P = o r

V
t

2
(1)

Although DEA are capable of self-sensing and servocontrolled responses, this requires signal conditioning circuitry and microcontrollers. The voltages involved are high,
often in the several kilovolt range, while the currents are
very low, in the hundreds of microampere range, and there
are few electronic components designed for this combination. All of this circuitry tends to be complex, bulky, and
expensive and cannot be easily used to distribute feedback
throughout a device.

B.M. OBrien et al.

Fig. 2 NAND gate design. The
resistance of Rvar will only drop
below Rfixed when both inputs
are charged

Fig. 1 Two-way DEA/DES interaction. DEA control the resistance

(R) of the switches via deformation and DES control the charge (Q)
on DEA via their changing resistance. The functions Q = f (R) and
R = f (Q) are determined by the specific device design

To address these limitations we present the Dielectric

Elastomer Switch(es) (DES). DES utilise the piezoresistivity (change of resistivity with stretch) of DEA electrodes to
control the charge on artificial muscles. The charged DEA
in turn deform the switches thus changing their resistances.
This two-way interaction between actuation and switching is
encapsulated in Fig. 1. DES can act as sensors by responding
to external deformations, act as driver circuitry by directly
charging or discharging DEA, and be combined into analogue or digital logic circuits using multiple actuators and
switches coupled through current and deformation.
In DEA electrodes, piezoresistivity can be achieved using a composite of conductive particles contained in a nonconductive matrix and the percolation effect [911]. In the
un-stretched material, a conducting path exists between particles from one end to the other. As the electrode stretches,
the density of conducting particles decreases and this conducting path disappears, increasing resistivity sharply. For
use in DES, piezoresistive elements should exhibit substantial and repeatable variations in resistance, be compliant up
to large strains (hundreds of percent), and tolerant of high
voltages.
In this paper we present a carbon grease compound developed to meet these switching requirements. The compound
was characterised and applied to make a NAND gate and
a more complex electromechanical oscillator. NAND gates
are functionally complete, in that any other Boolean logic
operation can be formed out of a combination of NAND
gates [12]. The oscillator demonstrates the combination of
self-sensing artificial muscles, proportional analogue logic,
and artificial muscle driver capability. Combined oscillator
circuits and NAND gates should make it possible to create
an artificial muscle digital computer.

2 Materials and methods

The switching compound consisted of approximately 5:1
by weight non-conductive Molykote 44 Medium grease
to Cabot Vulcan XC72 carbon black. It was applied by
hand onto 200% equibiaxially pre-stretched 3M (MN, USA)
VHB 4905. The VHB was fixed to a frame with an 80 mm

Fig. 3 Active part of a NAND gate for different inputs

diameter window and a 50 mm diameter disk at the centre

of the membrane. Four approximately 50 mm long, 1 mm
wide M shaped resistors of the switching compound were
formed. Resistance was measured while the disk was displaced and the resistors stretched sinusoidally at 0.75 Hz.
The response was bedded-in by cycling until stable and left
overnight. This increased sensitivity, possibly due to evaporation of non-conducting volatiles in the grease.
A schematic of the NAND gate design is given in Fig. 2.
The NAND gate was formed out of 267% equibiaxially prestretched VHB 4905 fixed to a frame with a window in
it. Two resistors (Rvar and Rfixed ) were formed out of the
switching compound and arranged in a ladder so that the
output voltage was proportional to their ratio. The switching
elements were applied during the stretching process so that
once the membrane was fully stretched, Rfixed was stretched
31% and Rvar 36%. Thus at rest the resistance of Rvar was
higher than Rfixed and the output voltage would be high.
Rvar was sandwiched between two DEA (Nyogel 756G carbon grease electrodes). Photos of the active part of a gate
with the inputs on and off are given in Fig. 3. When either was activated, Rvar was displaced to one side but remained largely uncompressed. When both were active, the
resistor was compressed, bringing particles of conductor together, causing the resistance to drop by orders of magnitude. This caused the output voltage to drop, the essence of a
NAND gate. The total fully pre-stretched length of Rvar was

Dielectric elastomer switches for smart artificial muscles

Fig. 4 Ball rolling oscillator. Three actuators supported a set of rails

and a ball. Actuation tilted the rails, rolling the ball

Fig. 6 Circuit diagram of the oscillator. For example, the downwards

displacement of actuator 1 under the ball will increase R1a and R1b.
This will increase the voltage on C3 and decrease the voltage on C2
rolling the ball clockwise towards C3
Fig. 7 Resistance versus stretch
ratio for four different electrodes
24 hours after fabrication

Fig. 5 DES and DEA layout. DEA are labelled C13 and DES are
labelled R13, a/b. The actuators were spaced at the corners of a 90 mm
equilateral triangle with outer and inner diameters of 80 and 50 mm
respectively

the track in the clockwise direction. The oscillator was designed so that the ratio of actuator displacement under the
ball to the actuation that this displacement induced was less
than one. If not, the rails would not tilt sufficiently and the
ball would stall.

3 Results
50 mm. Multiple 15 mm Rfixed resistors were painted
and tested to see which had the correct resistance, or connected together to form the correct resistance. This helped to
overcome fabrication variability. The NAND gate response
was characterised as the input channels were cycled between
20 and 2600 V and the output was connected to a second
NAND gate input.
The electromechanical oscillator consisted of three artificial muscles made of VHB 4905 pre-stretched 250% equibiaxially and supporting a set of rails on which a ball rolled
(Figs. 4, 5). When a muscle was activated, it would extend
downwards under the influence of gravity and tilt the rails,
rolling the ball. The electrode layout is shown in Fig. 5 and
an equivalent circuit in Fig. 6. The electrodes were patterned
to form actuator sections and switching sections. The actuator sections are designated C13 and were made using Nyogel 756G carbon grease. Coupled to each actuator were two
switching sections designated R13a and R13b and made
of the switching compound. When an actuator section was
displaced under the weight of the ball, the switches acted to
throttle the charging current of the actuator in the anticlockwise direction and the discharging current in the clockwise
direction. This caused the rails to tilt, rolling the ball around

The switching compound resistance as a function of stretch

24 hours after fabrication is given in Fig. 7. When stretched
by 40% the resistance changed by approximately three orders of magnitude. Substantial hysteresis was observed and
there was sample-to-sample variability most likely due to
the manual fabrication process. The resistors were stable
when several thousand volts were applied while they were
stretch-cycled, but were prone to spark erosion when not cycled.
Experimental results for all three channels of a NAND
gate with its output connected to the input of a second
NAND gate are given in Fig. 8. Response was as expected,
with the output dropping low only when both inputs were
high. Response time was approximately 1.5 s to turn off
and 0.1 s to turn on, if low and high thresholds of 1.25 and
2.15 kV are assumed respectively. Note that as DEA action
is proportional to voltage squared, the output load response
will amplify voltage waveform changes.
A video of the oscillator operation is provided in the
supplementary online material. It was able to self-start at
3000 V and ran at 0.53 Hz. Changing the supply voltage
provided an effective mechanism for controlling the speed

B.M. OBrien et al.

Fig. 8 NAND gate response showing voltage versus time

of the oscillator. Removing the ball caused the device to oscillate at approximately 2.3 Hz governed by the inertia of
the rails.

4 Discussion and conclusions

The NAND gate response could be improved by scaling
down to the microscale to reduce channel capacitances or replacing the viscous VHB4905 membrane with a more elastic silicone or polyurethane membrane. The ability of the
device to drive the input of a second gate demonstrates that
more complex digital circuits could be built by combining
multiple gates. In a sense, our NAND gate is an electromechanical relay, thus coming full circle from the relays
used in the earliest computers, through the all-electric nature of transistorised logic, and back again.
The oscillator successfully created a frequency tuneable
AC signal from a DC supply. Variations on this oscillator could generate clock signals for artificial muscle digital
computers or directly drive DEA devices such as the rotary
motor developed by Anderson et al. [13]. It is worth considering the oscillator from the point of view of a ball rolling
application. To control artificial muscles to roll a ball, conventional circuitry would require external sensors to detect
the location of the ball, a microcontroller to calibrate the
sensor data and implement a control law, and high-voltage
driver circuits to drive the actuators. Whilst this conventional approach could be more computationally powerful
than the specific DES design presented here, it would add
significant mass, volume, cost, and complexity.
We have demonstrated that DES can be used to make
high voltage analogue and digital circuitry intrinsic to artificial muscle devices. The next steps are to improve the fabrication process and develop better quality switching electrodes that are more sensitive, easier to pattern, and last
longer. Elimination of the tendency of un-stretch-cycled resistors to spark-erode is particularly critical, as this limited
the lifetime of the NAND gate to several hundred cycles before Rfixed ablated. The oscillator had a much better lifetime,
likely because of the mirrored charge and discharge resistances that meant change over time tended to cancel out.

Ion implantation [14, 15], quantum tunnelling composites

[16], and carbon nanotube electrodes [17] provide promising technologies to meet these needs. Once these improvements are realised, new, larger, and more complex circuitry
can be created.
DES driving circuitry can be scaled to suit device size,
a very considerable advantage over existing discrete switching circuitry. DES also provide a fundamentally new way
to create flexible electronics. Whilst there are other flexible polymer-based electronic circuit technologies [18], they
lack the ability to directly couple mechanics with digital
logic, their elongation-to-break is much smaller than that
of dielectric elastomers, and they have not demonstrated
switching at high voltages. DES can provide the simple distributed intelligence required for creation of biomimetic actuator arrays. Imagine the advantages of a prosthetic heart
that is light, beats automatically, and has no bearing surfaces
to wear. Ultimately, DES allow for the creation of dielectric
elastomer computers, making artificial muscles the worlds
first truly smart actuators.
Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the New Zealand
Tertiary Education Commission for Bens Bright Futures Top Achiever
Doctoral Scholarship, the University of Auckland and the Auckland
Bioengineering Institute, Todd Gisby, Thomas McKay, Tony Tse, Andrew Lo, Scott Walbran, Peter Blythe, Ross Green, David Howell, Rob
Kirton, Michelle OBrien, Mary OBrien, and Maurice OBrien.

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