All‐organic nanocomposites of functionalized polyurethane with enhanced dielectric and electroactive strain behavior

For a dielectric elastomer, increasing its dielectric constant substantially could lead to a high electric field induced strain under a low operation field. In this work, high dielectric constant nanocomposites were developed by chemically bonding copper phthalocyanine oligomer (CuPc), a high dielectric constant organic semiconductor, to polyurethane (PU). Transmission electron microscope‐observed morphologies revealed that the sizes of CuPc particles in a nanocomposite of PU attached with 8.78 vol.% of CuPc were in the range of 10–20 nm, much smaller than the sizes (250–600 nm) in physical blend of PU with the same volume fraction of CuPc. At 100 Hz, the nanocomposite film exhibited a dielectric constant of 391, representing a more than 60 times increase with respect to the neat PU. The enhanced dielectric response in the nanocomposite makes it possible to induce a high electromechanical response. A strain of 17.7% and an elastic energy density of 0.927 J/cm³ were achieved under an electric field of 10 V/µm. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.