As a strain-gradient-induced electric polarization, flexoelectricity in dielectric materials is benefiting from its size effect and manipulating strain gradients. Dielectric elastomers (DE) are stretchable with tunable physical and chemical properties. Large deformation enables big strain gradient, highlighting flexoelectricity during electro-mechanical coupling procedures. High and tunable electro-mechanical efficiency is then highly expected in elastomers. In this work, mechanically tunable flexoelectricity in DE is verified with theoretical analysis and experiments. A model is developed to study the mechanism of elastomers under pre-stretch. Experiment verification is applied by measuring the transverse flexoelectric coefficients of polydimethylsiloxane. Flexoelectric coefficient increases with the increase in stretch by one order of magnitude. This work opens up an avenue for tunable flexoelectric applications with stretchable dielectric materials.

中文翻译：

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弹性体中挠曲电性的机械可调性

作为应变梯度诱导的电极化，介电材料中的挠曲电性受益于其尺寸效应和操纵应变梯度。介电弹性体 (DE) 具有可伸缩的物理和化学特性。大变形可实现大应变梯度，突出机电耦合过程中的柔性电。因此，人们高度期望弹性体具有高且可调的机电效率。在这项工作中，通过理论分析和实验验证了 DE 中机械可调的柔性电。开发了一个模型来研究弹性体在预拉伸下的机制。通过测量聚二甲基硅氧烷的横向挠曲电系数来应用实验验证。挠曲电系数随着拉伸的增加而增加一个数量级。