Modelling and FEA Anaylsis of MEMS ETA for Flying Robot

Abstract

In recent years, MEMS sensors and actuators are getting more attention in daily life application of science & technology due to its compactness, miniaturization, economically inexpensive and highly efficient as compare to the other ordinary devices. The Electro Thermal Actuators (ETA) are playing an important role in Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) technology due to its high efficiency. In this research work ETA is modeled and simulated. ETA for micro flying robot is designed and fabricated in virtual environment using 0.35 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) MEMS technology. INTELLISUITE and MATLAB software have been used for simulation and modeling purpose. The thermal force-based CMOS-MEMS micro actuator consists of four supporting beams in a wing. The wing resonates in lateral mode (1st mode of direction) in the consequence of AC biasing through four long beams. Beam is made of polysilicon and aluminum using bimorph actuation mechanism where polysilicon works as heating resistor. In the presence of thermal force, ETA was actuated to produce maximum amplitude at resonance. Resonance frequency, maximum amplitude and thermal force was measured 843Hz, 124.15mm and 3.26µN mathematically, while the simulated measurements were found to be 970Hz, 97.2mm and 4.67µN.