《design and wafer level fabrication of SMA wire microactuators on silicon》.pdf

982 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 19, NO. 4, AUGUST 2010 Design and Wafer-Level Fabrication of SMA Wire Microactuators on Silicon Donato Clausi, Henrik Gradin, Stefan Braun, Jan Peirs, Göran Stemme, Fellow, IEEE, Dominiek Reynaerts, Member, IEEE , and Wouter van der Wijngaart, Member, IEEE Abstract—This paper reports on the fabrication of microactua- heating results in the generation of work. SMA-based actuators tors through wafer-level integration of prestrained shape memory mostly utilize the one-way effect. Thus, an external force (cold- alloy wires to silicon structures. In contrast to previous work, the state reset) is needed to deform the material in martensitic phase wires are strained under pure tension, and the cold-state reset is provided by single-crystalline silicon cantilevers. The fabrication in order to achieve a cyclical behavior [3]. Hence, the SMA is based on standard microelectromechanical systems manufactur- is typically coupled with an additional mechanical element, ing technologies, and it enables an actuation scheme featuring high which can be either a bias spring or another SMA (“antagonistic work densities. A mathematical model is discussed, which provides design”) [4]. a useful approximation for practical designs and allows analyzing There are several materials displaying the SME; however, the actuators performance. Prototypes have been tested, and the influence of constructive variations on the actuator behavior is the most relevant alloy of this type, from a commercial point theoretically and experimentally evaluated. The test results are in of view, is an ordered intermeta