MEMS Actuators

Patton, S.T. Zabinski, J.S. Failure mechanisms of a MEMS actuator in very high vacuum. Tribol. Int. 2002, 35 (6), 373. 

Microactuators operate by converting one form of energy (e.g., electrical, thermal, electromagnetic) into kinetic energy of movable components. They are sometimes referred to as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) actuators, but the later term is more... 

Motion is generated by electrostatic attraction force between electrically charged surfaces. Examples of electrostatic MEMS actuators are in-plane comb drives (Fig. la) and out-of-plane parallel plate actuators (Fig. lb) [4]. Both types of actuators require large driving voltages... 

Microactuators, Fig. 2 Pictures and diagrams of (a) in-plane, surface micromachined electrothermal bimorph MEMS actuator and microactuator bank and (b) in-plane... 

There are considerable potential advantages in the use of conjugated polymer actuators for MEMS [103-105]. As described below, various prototype MEMS actuators using conjugated polymers have already been constructed with promising performances. 

Integrable Micro-Optics MEMS Actuators Opto MEMS... 

Actuators Current MEMS Actuator Principles Materials Selection Conjugated Polymer Microactuators 14-17... 

Terry, M. Reiter, J. Bohringer, K.F. Suh, J.W. and Kovacs, G.T.A. A docking system, for microsatellites based on MEMS actuator arrays. Smart Mater. 

Harris KD, Cuypers R, Scheibe P, Mol GN, Lub J, Bastiaansen CWM, Broer DJ (2005) Molecular orientation control for thermal and UV-diiven polymer MEMS actuators. Smart Sensors, Actuators, and MEMS 11 5836 493-503... 

Chapuis, Y.A., Fukuta, Y., Mita, Y. and Fujita, H. (2004) Autonomous Decentralized Systems Based on Distributed Controlled MEMS Actuators for Micro Conveyance Application , Seisan-Kenkyu 109-16. 

Zheng W, Alici G, Clingan PR, Munro BJ, Spinks GM, Steele JR, Wallace GG (2013) Polypyrrole stretchable actuators. J Polym Sci Part B Polym Phys 51 57-63 Zhou JWL, Chan H-Y, To TKH, Lai KWC, Li WJ (2004) Polymer MEMS actuators for underwater micromanipulation. lEEE/ASME Trans Mechatron 9 334-342... 

Roussel M, Malhaire C, Deman A-L et al (2014) Electromechanical study of polyurethane films with carbon black nanoparticles for MEMS actuators. J Micromech Microeng 24 055011 Schlaak HF, Jungmann M, Matysek M et al (2005) Novel multilayer electrostatic solid-state actuators with elastic dielectric. Proc SPIE 5759 121-133 Shian S, Diebold RM, McNamara A et al (2012) Highly compliant transparent electrodes. Appl Phys Lett 101 061101... 

The distance between the mirrors can be adjusted with a MEMS actuator to enable a tunable interferometer. When the distance between the mirrors is adjusted to 2/2, the light passes through the interferometer while light with other wavelengths is blocked. The Fabry-Perot interferometer acts as a narrow bandpass filter for light, with the bandpass is dependent on the finesse of the optical cavity. 

Figure 7.4 Line scans across a MEMS actuator taken with white hght noncontact interferometry. Line scans can be used to make quantitative measurements of out-of-plane dimensions.

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