Patent Landscape: Dielectric Elastomeric Materials

Abstract

The trends in the development of the dielectric elastomeric materials industry have been studied using methods of patent information analysis. It is shown that China and Japan are the leaders in the number of patent families, while Korea (insulating materials) and the USA (pyro-, piezo-electrics and electrets) share the third place. The Russian Federation is in sixth place in the ranking. Samsung Group, a South Korean group of companies, has protected intellectual property objects in its portfolio in all types of dielectric materials under consideration. It is noted that in the field of dielectric elastomeric materials, more the patents are registered by Chinese universities rather than large companies. It is shown that the largest number of patents have been obtained for electrical insulating materials, followed by elastomeric compositions with piezoelectric properties. A study of the classification indexes of joint patents has shown that when creating these dielectric materials, the main focus is on mixtures of three or four polymers. Polysiloxanes and polyesters are the most widely used polymer bases. Nanostructured additives, oxides and hydroxides of transition and alkaline earth metals are used as functional components of the mixtures.