The interplay between symmetry-breaking and symmetry-preserving bifurcations in soft dielectric films and the emergence of giant electro-actuation

Soft elastomers that can exhibit extremely large deformations under the action of an electric field are essential for applications such as soft robotics, stretchable and flexible electronics, energy harvesting among others. The critical limiting factor in conventional electro-actuation materials is occurrence so-called pull-in instability. In this work, we demonstrate extraordinarily simple way to coax a dielectric thin film towards symmetry-breaking pitchfork bifurcation state while avoiding Through nonlinear interplay between two modes, predict strains exceed what conventionally possible by 200$\%$, at significantly lower applied fields.