Tailoring Dielectric and Actuated Properties of Elastomer Composites by Bioinspired Poly(dopamine) Encapsulated Graphene Oxide

In this study, we obtained dielectric elastomer composites with controllable dielectric and actuated properties by using a biomimetic method. We used dopamine (DA) to simultaneously coat the graphene oxide (GO) and partially reduce GO by self-polymerization of DA on GO. The poly(dopamine) (PDA) coated GO (GO-PDA) was assembled around rubber latex particles by hydrogen bonding interaction between carboxyl groups of carboxylated nitrile rubber (XNBR) and imino groups or phenolic hydroxyl groups of GO-PDA during latex compounding, forming a segregated GO-PDA network at a low percolation threshold. The results showed that the introduction of PDA on GO prevented the restack of GO in the matrix. The dielectric and actuated properties of the composites depend on the thickness of PDA shell. The dielectric loss and the elastic modulus decrease, and the breakdown strength increases with increasing the thickness of PDA shell. The maximum actuated strain increases from 1.7% for GO/XNBR composite to 4.4% for GO-PDA/XNBR composites with the PDA thickness of about 5.4 nm. The actuated strain at a low electric field (2 kV/mm) obviously increases from 0.2% for pure XNBR to 2.3% for GO-PDA/XNBR composite with the PDA thickness of 1.1 nm, much higher than that of other DEs reported in previous studies. Thus, we successfully obtained dielectric composites with low dielectric loss and improved breakdown strength and actuated strain at a low electric field, facilitating the wide application of dielectric elastomers. (Graph Presented).