ABOUT ME
Dorina M. Opris is an organic chemist who uses her synthetic skills to develop novel functional materials. She obtained her B.Sc. in chemistry at Babes-Bolyai University (BBU), Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 1997. She then joined Natex S.A. as a chemist developing flavors and simultaneously did her MSc in chemistry at BBU. From 1999 to 2001 she worked with Prof. Grosu at BBU toward a PhD and then joined the group of Prof. Schlüter at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, where she finished her PhD in February 2005. After moving to Zürich in November 2006, she joined the Laboratory of Functional Polymers, Empa, Dübendorf, Switzerland, as PostDoc and later as scientist. Since 2014 she has been the leader of Functional Dielectric Elastomers group at the Laboratory of Functional Polymers and since 2023 she has been an adjunct professor at ETHZ. The aim of her work is to develop dielectric elastomers with increased dielectric permittivity to be used as dielectric in devices operated at low voltages.
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MY GROUP
We design and synthesize stimuli-responsive elastomers and use them in elastic capacitors that transduce one form of energy into another. A proper selection of polymer backbone, polar groups, glass transition temperature, processing into thin films, and subsequent cross-linking has led us to two breakthroughs: piezoelectricity can be married with elasticity, and the highestever dielectric permittivity polysiloxane elastomers allow achieving actuators operated at unprecedently low voltages. The most exciting aspect of our materials is the combination of high dielectric permittivity, low elastic modulus, and high dielectric breakdown field achieved, which makes them critical components in soft robots, actuators, sensors, harvesters, Li-ion batteries, and light-emitting devices.