MEMS based heatuators are being used extensively for actuation purpose. The conventional heatuators have different arm widths while this paper proposes a variant design that has equal widths but unequal resistances. The new design brings in the advantages of faster response and greater deflections for similar condition. The heatuators have been simulated using the coupled-fied element SOLID98 of the finite element analysis software ANSYS.

A novel heatuator

Electro-thermal (E-T) actuators have been developed to complement the capabilities of electrostatic actuators. The thermal actuators presented here can be arrayed to generate high forces. Equally significant is that the single actuators and arrays of actuators operate at voltages and currents that are directly compatible with standard microelectronics. This paper demonstrates how combinations of two or more electro-thermal actuators can be applied to a variety of basic building-block micromechanical devices: array of ten lateral actuators; array of ten vertical actuators; vertically actuated two-axis tilting mirror; corner-cube retroreflector actuated by lateral array; grippers over the die edge with flip-over wiring; rotary stepper motor; flip-up optical grating on rotary stepper motor; linear stepper motor; and a linear stepper motor for assembly of hinged structures.

A novel heatuator

References

Applications for surface-micromachined polysilicon thermal actuators and arrays

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