PhD student position at EPFL in Dielectric Elastomer Actuators

The Microsystems for Space Technologies Laboratory at the EPFL has an opening for two PhD students in the field of dielectric elastomer actuators.

Dielectric Elastomer Actuators are stretchable soft transducers that can be used as actuators, for energy harvesting, as sensors, switches and as lightweight structural elements. These attributes make them particularly well suited for intelligent deformable machines. Two challenges today in DEAs are: a) several kV are required for operation, and b) fabrication of complex devices with variable stiffness is not currently practical.

The two research goals (one per PhD student) of this project are: a) to develop drop-on-demand additive manufacturing technologies for printing all parts of DEAs to enable new freedom of design, and b) to reduce actuation voltage to a few V by developing a microfabrication technology for stacked actuators consisting of nm-thick layers of elastomer and stretchable electrodes.

Description

Two PhD positions are available:

Topic 1: Drop-on-demand printing techniques for complex dielectric elastomer actuators
The student will apply drop-on-demand printing technology to fabricate high-performance dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA). Additive manufacturing techniques, and in particular drop-on-demand, can enable functionality and geometries otherwise impossible to realize for DEAs. The student will develop drop-on-demand techniques to create novel soft transducers by printing all key elements: elastomer membranes, stretchable electrodes, active electronics, and structural elements. This non-conventional approach to making DEAs allows unprecedented flexibility of manufacturing, and rapid testing of new device concepts.
For DEAs applied for biomedical applications, drop on demand will be used to pattern proteins on the elastomeric substrate in order to achieve localized binding of cells on devices. Direct printing of living cells in solution will also be investigated to allow printing of complete analysis platforms.

Topic 2: Ultra-low voltage DEAs based on stacks of single-molecule thick dielectric layers
The goal of this ambitious project is to reduce the actuation voltage of DEAs from kiloVolts down to Volts, by reducing by over 1000x the thickness of the elastomer membranes used in DEAs. The student will develop reliable techniques to fabricate elastomer membranes and stretchable electrodes with layer thicknesses of under 10 nm (today the standard thickness is more than 10 µm for the elastomer). The main approach will be using Langmuir-Blodgett films to create molecular monolayers layers of alternatingly elastomer and electrodes. Other techniques such as spin coating will also be investigated. The student will develop interconnection techniques to enable the fabrication of µm-thick devices. Finally, applications in energy harvesting and in actuation will be investigated.
This work will be done in close collaboration with the University of Cergy-Pontoise near Paris (prof. F. Vidal and prof. S. Cantin), and the student will spend approximately one year of his/her PhD there.

Contract details
- Up to maximum 4 years (based on performance). PhD studies typically take 3-4 years at the EPFL.
- Start date: 3.2015 (could be as late as 6-2015)
- Excellent facilities
- Work location is Neuchatel, Switzerland.
- Competitive salary
- The main languages used for technical discussions in the lab are English and French.

Nr of positions available : 2