Modeling, fabrication and performance test of an electro-thermal microactuator

The present study is aimed to develop an electro-thermal microactuator. The microactuator adopts a deformable plate with a double-layer structure consisting of a silicon layer and an aluminum layer. As the microactuator is heated by an implanted electric heater, a displacement at the tip of the deformable plate is generated due to the different thermal expansion between these two layers. A serpentine area of N-type silicon is formed by ion implantation in the silicon layer and used as the electric heater. The structure of the microactuator is proposed, modeled, and fabricated in this study. Finite-element analysis is first performed to predict the performance of the microactuator with a multiphysics modeling package (ANSYS 10.0), and then the dimensions of the device are determined. The designed electro-thermal microactuator is fabricated by the semiconductor manufacturing technologies. Experiments on the displacement of the microactuator have been carried out by a microscopic image system to evaluate the performance of the design as well as to demonstrate validity of the modeling.