Design, analysis and experimental characterization of MEMS based one hot-arm electrothermal actuator

Abstract

The focus of this study is to analyze the temperature, stress, and mechanical displacement distribution of a U-shaped one hot-arm MicroElectroMechanical System (MEMS) based electrothermal actuator using CoventorWare software. The actuator was fabricated using the commercially available SOIMUMPs process from Science. The Finite Element Analysis (FEA) results were verified through the experimental characterization of fabricated structure at different actuation voltages and are found to be in good agreement. Furthermore, peak value of actuation voltage is measured before the failure of the electrothermal structure occurs.