An optical wireless bistable micro-actuator

• Published in: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (ICMA) pp. 1624 - 1629
• Main Authors: Xingxing Liu, Al Hajjar, Hani, Lamarque, Frederic, Dore, Emmanuel, Carton, Olivier, Zeinert, Andreas, Charvet, Stephane
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.08.2015
• Subjects: Bistable micro-actuator; Force; Heating; Laser beams; Micro-fabrication; Optical beams; Shape; shape memory alloy; Switches; Wireless actuation; Wireless communication
• ISBN: 9781479970971; 1479970972
• ISSN: 2152-7431; 2152-744X
• DOI: 10.1109/ICMA.2015.7237728

An optical wireless bistable micro-actuator is presented in this paper. The bistable mechanism is based on antagonistic pre-shaped double beams, which have the merits of simple pre-load operation and symmetrical output force. The bistable micro-actuator was fabricated with deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technique using silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer. The bistable beam has a thickness of 25 μm and a depth of 400 μm. The stroke of the bistable micro-actuator is 300 μm. An 8 μm thick compressive SiO 2 layer is deposited on one side of the strip shaped (0.1×1×3 mm) shape memory alloy (SMA) active element, acting as the biasing spring. The SiO 2 layer created a two way memory effect and eliminated the load effect of SMA element. Stroke of SMA element is tested. The wireless actuation was realized by laser heated SMA active element.