Electrical breakdown phenomena of dielectric elastomers

Silicone elastomers have been heavily investigated as candidates for dielectric elastomers and are as such almost ideal candidates with their inherent softness and compliance but they suffer from low dielectric permittivity.[1] This shortcoming has been sought optimized by many means during recent years. However, optimization with respect to the dielectric permittivity solely may lead to other problematic phenomena such as premature electrical breakdown. In this work, we focus on the chloro propyl functionalized silicone elastomers prepared in Madsen et al[2] and we investigate the electrical breakdown patterns of two similar chloro propyl functionalized silicone elastomers which break down electrically in a rather different way as well as we compare them to a silicone based reference. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS) are used to evaluate the elastomers after electrical breakdown.