thermal actuators – TechConnect Briefs

Micromachined Thermal Multimorph Actuators Fabricated by Bulk-etched MUMPs Process

Tuantranont A., Bright V.M., National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), TH

Micromachined thermal multimorph actuators for out-of-plane displacements have been designed and fabricated by Multi-Users MEMS Process (MUMPs) with a post-processing bulk etching step. Micromachined actuators have potential applications in microtransducers such as scanning tunneling microscope [...]

Joule Heating Simulation of Poly-Silicon Thermal Micro-Actuators

Silversmith D.J., Reid J.R., Air Force Research Laboratory, US

Previous studies of surface micro-machined polycrystalline silicon MEMS thermal micro-actuators have shown that these simple devices can provide deflections on the order of 10 micrometers at CMOS compatible drive voltages. These thermo-mechanical devices operate by [...]