Scalable industrial manufacturing of DEAP

Abstract

Dielectric Electro-Active Polymer (DEAP) technology has reached a level of maturity that makes it possible to fabricate reliable devices, which can be implemented in various industrial applications. Danfoss PolyPower has established scalable industrial manufacturing processes to enable commercialization of PolyPower film and actuators. The new series of DEAP actuators is based on the design of core-free rolled push actuators or folded pull actuators, by rolling or folding of long length of electro active material. The manufacturing processes involve roll-to-roll coating of elastomer mixtures to form endless micro-structured elastomer film/web, roll-to-roll vacuum deposition (PVD) of electrode material onto the micro-structured elastomer film, and roll-to-roll lamination and winding of tailored Pull and Push DEAP elements, also called InLastor. The paper will describe the processing steps and the scalable pilot production set up having capability of manufacturing kilometres of DEAP material per week.