A hybrid vertical comb-drive actuator supported by flexible pdms suspensions

Author

Lee, M. ; Chen, Y. -C ; Chang, C. ; Hou, M. ; Chen, R.

Author_Institution

Inst. of NanoEngineering & Microsyst., Nat. Tsing Hua Univ., Hsinchu, Taiwan

fYear

2011

fDate

5-9 June 2011

Firstpage

1476

Lastpage

1479

Abstract

In this work, we proposed a hybrid PDMS-silicon electrostatic actuator with a large stroke under low driving voltages. The device features a staggered vertical comb-drive suspended by PDMS springs. Because of the flexibility of PDMS, an initial staggered displacement was naturally formed due to the self-weight of the device. Experimental results showed that the combination of polymeric springs and silicon structures enabled the large stroke of 3.73 μm at 3.5 kHz. The presented heterogeneous integration technology improves the performance and may bring new functionalities to micro-systems.

Keywords

electrostatic actuators; microfabrication; electrostatic actuator; flexible pdms suspensions; hybrid vertical comb-drive actuator; low driving voltages; polymeric springs; silicon structures; staggered displacement; Actuators; Etching; Fabrication; Micromechanical devices; Silicon; Springs; Suspensions; Heterogeneous vertical; Hybrid MEMS; PDMS; comb-drive actuator;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference (TRANSDUCERS), 2011 16th International

Conference_Location

Beijing

ISSN

Pending

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0157-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TRANSDUCERS.2011.5969630

Filename

5969630