Ni-carbon nanotubes nanocomposite for robust microelectromechanical systems fabrication

Abstract

This article presents a novel fabrication process to enhance the operational performance and reliability of electrothermal microactuators. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) (outer diameter: 10–20nm, inner diameter: 5–10nm, length: 0.5–200μm) are incorporated in an electrolytic nickel deposition process in which a well-dispersed Ni-CNTs colloidal solution is made by a special acid oxidative method to synthesis a Ni-CNTs nanocomposite for device fabrication. Measurement results show that the microactuator plated with CNTs (0.028g∕L) needs the power requirement less 95% than the pure nickel device at the same output displacement of 3μm. The performance improvement of the electrothermal microactuator made of the nanocomposite, including device strength and power efficiency, has shown to be similar to the Ni-diamond composites (L. N. Tsai, G. R. Shen, Y. T. Cheng, and W. S. Hsu, The 54th Electronic Components and Technology Conference, June 2004, pp. 472–476)). In addition, the E∕ρ ratio of the Ni-CNTs composite can be enhanced to 1.47 times higher than that of pure nickel, which is a fascinating result for resonant device fabrication.