Fabrication, Testing and Structural Analysis of Electro-Thermal Microactuators

• Main Authors: Jung-Nan Liao, 廖榮男
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99034383763641471195

碩士 === 逢甲大學 === 機械工程學所 === 95 === Due to the heat generation from an applied voltage, a non-uniform thermal expansion may occur in an electro-thermal micro-actuator, and thus the tip of the structure will deflect and act as an actuator. In this study, electro-thermal micro-actuators were first fabricated by surface micromachining process, and the sticking problem together with the warp phenomenon has been effectively improved. According to the experimental result, the quantity of warp can be affected by the parameters such as the thickness of the structural layer, doping content and annealing time. Besides, the quantity of warp is the smallest for the electro-thermal micro-actuator made by using W-1 fabrication parameters. When the applied voltage is too high enough, the break point of the electro-thermal micro-actuator was observed to occur approximately at the fixed end of the hot arm; however, if the applied voltage is high and the temperature is still below the melting point of the material, the hot arm of the electro-thermal micro-actuator will buckle due to the insufficient heat dissipation. Next, the finite element software, ANSYS, was employed to investigate the effects of various design parameters on the performance of electro-thermal micro-actuators. It is shown that the computed results are very close to the experimental data in addition to having the same trend.