A novel self-heating paraffin membrane micro-actuator

We present for the first time a thermal phase-change micro-actuator that is based on a "conductive" paraffin. The conductive paraffin approach addresses the key challenges in the design of thermal phase-change actuators: The efficiency is increased, the reaction time is reduced and the heating of the surrounding structures is also reduced compared to the standard paraffin actuator design with metal heating resistors. A novel fabrication process for diaphragm actuators has been established and sample actuators have been characterized. It turns out that the conductive paraffin actuator is slightly more efficient than actuators with buried heaters, while the fabrication process is much simpler.