Creasing to cratering instability in polymers under ultrahigh electric fields.

We report a new type of instability in a substrate-bonded elastic polymer subject to an ultrahigh electric field. Once the electric field reaches a critical value, the initially flat surface of the polymer locally folds against itself to form a pattern of creases. As the electric field further rises, the creases increase in size and decrease in density, and strikingly evolve into craters in the polymer. The critical field for the electrocreasing instability scales with the square root of the polymer's modulus. Linear stability analysis overestimates the critical field for the electrocreasing instability. A theoretical model has been developed to predict the critical field by comparing the potential energies in the creased and flat states. The theoretical prediction matches consistently with the experimental results.