Efficiency enhanced novel 3T heads V-beam microactuator for low power applications.

Structural Optimization and efficiency improvement of an electrothermal microactuator compared to its fundamental architectural design is reported in this paper. The principal component in the proposed device design is an electrothermal V-beam microactuator which is implemented to actuate a pre-stressed bistable curved beam, a switching element and thereby establishes a bistable MEMS switch. The proposed device is fabricated on SOI wafer with 10 µm thick device Si layer using SOIMUMPs(Silicon-On-Insulator Multi User MEMS Process) process with 3 masks. The optimized design provides 11.11% improvement in the actuation force and 8.81% increase in the axial displacement compared to the conventional V-beam actuator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]