Very high displacement to voltage ratio MEMS thermal actuator

An electro-thermal actuator in chevron type with misaligned beams is proposed for a tunable dual aperture. The actuator can obtain 3D image and distance information in a single camera. The proposed thermal actuator is based on two slightly misaligned chevron thermal actuators from the fulcrum point of the lever beam. This structure can amplify the small displacement of the single chevron thermal actuator. To find maximum output displacement, various beam conditions, pre-angle and the distance of misaligned actuator beams were simulated by using ANSYS 13.0. The device was fabricated by MEMS process. From the simulation, the displacement can be amplified for 85 times. The measured displacement of the actuator was 650 μm with 6V of low driving voltage.