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This paper reports efforts to develop paraffin actuators that rely on a phase change to achieve actuation. While paraffin phase-change actuators have existed for some time, this work relies on heating the paraffin in situ, rather than using external heaters. Graphite is used to create an in situ heater that utilizes resistive heating as a voltage is applied across the graphite-paraffin wax mixture. The main motivation behind this work is to reduce the actuation time and power required. An added advantage of the developed in situ heater is the use of printed circuit board technology to fabricate the prototypes rapidly and in a cost-effective manner. A video microscope and IR camera are used to characterize the performance of the actuators built in this work. Different compositions of graphite in paraffin wax are used to measure the actuator performance characteristics such as actuation time, actuation height and power required. Both dc and a pulsed power input are used to test the prototypes. Comparison with a similar actuator that utilizes a thin film heater shows a 90% reduction in actuation time for similar power usage. The actuator developed as part of this work resulted in 0.577 mm dot height at 0.69 W power input in 6 s translating to ∼4 J/actuation for an actuator chamber of 2.82 μL. A new performance metric, 'effective actuation time (W s −1 mm −4 )', is used to compare the performance of this technology with other phase-change-material-based actuators, and the actuator developed in this work is found to be 10 to 200 times better.

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