Abstract
The necessity to reduce the size of actuators and at the same time increase the force andthe air gap has placed severe constraints on the suitability of current microactuatortechnology for various applications. This has led to the development of new actuatortechnologies based on novel materials or modifying existing systems. As an effort in thisdirection, we are reporting on the design and fabrication of a hybrid actuator employing acombination of electromagnetic and piezoelectric actuation methods for the first time. Thisactuator was designed and optimized by using the piezoelectric and electromagnetic solversof commercially available FEM software packages (CoventorWare and ANSYS). The deviceconsists of a shaped piezoelectric composite cantilever on the top and a copper coilwound around a permalloy core assembled on a silicon substrate with a permanentmagnet at the bottom. The composite cantilever consists of polarized piezoelectricpolymer polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) with an electroplated permalloy layeron one side. Microstructures in the required shape are introduced using novelmethodologies including laser micromachining and microembossing. The hybridactuator has been fabricated and tested using standard testing procedures. Theexperimental data are compared with the simulation results from both the finite elementmethods and the analytical model. There is excellent agreement between theresults obtained in simulation and by experiment. A maximum total deflection of400 µm with a typicalcontact force of 200 µN has been achieved.
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