Electrostatic impact-drive microactuator

Complete System for Wireless Powering and Remote Control of Electrostatic Actuators by Inductive Coupling

“…Numerous applications can be envisaged if remote control is provided to autonomous microrobotic systems, notably in the fields of microassembly and testing of equipments, and circuits in confined environments [8]. Several microrobots have been fabricated over the past ten years, using various actuation means like mechanical transduction [9], thermal expansion [10], [11], or electrostatic forces [12], [13]. The major difficulty in remotely powering these devices is still the amount of power that needs to be transmitted: according to the type of actuation, it can vary from a few hundred milliwatts to several watts [14], [15].…”

“…If the majority of inductive links relates to low-power applications, by optimizing the size and the quality factor of the receiver antennas, as well as the emitter power, several watts can be transmitted over several centimeters [16]. Successful remote powered motion by inductive link has been demonstrated for impact drive [12] and electrostatic comb drive [17] actuators. In 2003, Hollar et al presented the first powered autonomous silicon microrobot, thanks to photocells [13].…”

“…Only few remote powering experiments of individual microactuators have been realized so far [12], [13], [17], and no complete protocol of communication for both powering and controlling multiple independent actuators have been reported yet. To more deeply investigate this topic and to make possible the operation of autonomous microrobots incorporating DMMS capabilities, this paper proposes and demonstrates a complete approach based on magnetic coupling for both powering and asynchronous control of integrated microactuator arrays.…”

Nonlinear Dynamics of an Electrically Driven Impact Microactuator

“…Mita et al [10,11] fabricated a micromachined impact actuator driven by electric forces. The impulsive force is generated by collisions between a silicon micromass and a stopper.…”

“…Although harmful in many mechanical systems, such as rattling in a gear box, recurrent impacts are utilized for the operation of devices in macro-, micro-, and even nanoscale devices. In this paper, we study the impacting dynamics in an electrically driven microactuator, which has applications in microscopes, assembly of micromachines, nanoscale data storage, and microsurgery [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] . When the characteristic size is less than a millimeter, manual assembly of microcomponents faces difficulty of sticking due to surface adhesion forces, such as electrostatic forces, van der Waals forces, and surface tension [13,14].…”