A novel vertical translational microactuator based on thin-film piezoelectric actuation is presented, using a set of four compound bend-up/bend-down unimorphs to produce translational motion of a moving platform or stage. The actuation material is a chemical-solution deposited lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) thin film. Prototype designs have shown as much as 120 μm of static displacement, with 80...

This work reports electrothermal MEMS parallel plate-rotation (PPR) for a single-imager based stereoscopic endoscope. A thin optical plate was directly connected to an electrothermal MEMS microactuator with bimorph structures of thin silicon and aluminum layers. The fabricated MEMS PPR device precisely rotates an transparent optical plate up to 37° prior to an endoscopic camera and creates the ...

INTRODUCTION Surface tension is an inherently dominant force in the microscale. Electrocapillarity, the modification of surface tension by applying an electric field, has received renewed attention because of its potential usefulness in microfluidics. Pollack et al. demonstrated a microactuator for rapid manipulation of discrete microdroplets by direct electric control of the surface tension. [...

This paper presents the theoretical design and analysis of a tunable Fabry–Perot resonant microcavity filter realized by movable-waveguide-based integrated optical MEMS technology in InP. Wide-bandwidth, high-reflectivity horizontal InP/air-gap distributed bragg reflector (DBR) mirrors monolithically integrated with the waveguides have been proposed. The filter can be tuned by moving one of the...

Thin-film shape memory alloys (SMAs) have become excellent candidates for microactuator fabrication in MEMS. We develop a material model based on a combination of free energy principles in combination with stochastic homogenization techniques. In the first step of the development, we construct free energies and develop phase fraction and thermal evolution laws for homogeneous, single-crystal SM...

Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) are good candidates to actuate endoscope heads but the cooling problem must be solved particularly in confined situations. For these reasons, a new SMA microactuator specially designed for active endoscopy applications has been developed in our laboratory. This work is a new step in the approach of using integrated thermoelectric cooling with SMA actuators. In fact, th...

Micro or nano distance manipulations are of prime importance in the MEMS industry. Microdevices are ideal for micropositioning systems due to their small size. Microactuators used to produce small displacements would need large actuation forces and a long driving distance. This would require large voltages to produce the desired forces. Actuators based on impulsive forces provide a solution to ...

With areal recording density of hard disk drives (HDD) historically growing at an average of 60% per year, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain the precise positioning required of the eversmaller GMR heads to read and write data. It is predicted that 100 Gb/in HDD areal density would be probably delivered by 2003. To reach such high track densities, the lower mechanical distur...

This paper presents track-following control design, with a new sensitivity shaping technique, for dual-stage servo systems in hard disk drives. The shaping technique simultaneously takes care of both complexity of controllers and robustness, important issues for controller implementation. As dual-stage servo systems, in addition to the conventional voice coil motor, a microactuator at the slide...

The miniaturization and development of complex Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) led to a need for an increase in performance of such systems in terms of displacement range, accuracy, velocity etc. There is a huge potential of using them as tools in nanonoscience such as high-density probe memory applications, scanning probe microscopy (e.g. nanolithography, prototyping of nanostructures)...