A micro transportation system (MTS) with large movement of containers driven by electrostatic comb-drive actuators (original) (raw)
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Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 2000
This paper presents a novel micro transportation system (MTS), which can drive micro containers in both straight and curved paths based on an electrostatic comb actuator and a ratchet mechanism. The micro container, which has four driving wings and four anti-reverse wings attached to its central 'backbone', is driven to move forward only by an electrostatic actuator. While the driving wings act as the legs of a water strider to push the container forward, the anti-reverse wings work as a ratchet mechanism to prevent the container from moving backward. The container with a length, width and thickness of 500 μm, 250 μm and 30 μm, respectively, moves unidirectionally with a desirable velocity up to 1000 μm s −1 in straight and curved paths. The velocity can be changed by varying the frequency and/or amplitude of the driving voltage. The MTS has been fabricated from SOI (silicon on insulator) wafer utilizing silicon micromachining technology with only one mask.
Novelmicro Transportation Systems Based on Ratchetmechanism and Electrostatic Actuators
TRANSDUCERS 2007 - 2007 International Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference, 2007
This paper describes a design and fabrication of Si micro transportation systems (MTS) to drive microcars based on ratchet mechanism and electrostatic comb-drive actuators. This MTS consists of linear and rotational comb actuators, microcars, and micro ratchet mechanism. The microcars can be moved with different velocities by comb-drive actuators through ratchet teeth. In this study, the MTS was fabricated by using SOI wafer with device layer of 30µm, buried SiO 2 layer of 4µm, and with only one mask. In our experiments, the movement of the microcar has been tested with driving frequency ranges from 5Hz to 40Hz. The velocity of the microcar was proportional to the driving frequency, and it matched well with theoretical calculation.
2007 International Symposium on Micro-NanoMechatronics and Human Science, 2007
motors to move a sliding shuttle. In this case, the This paper presents a novel micro transportation driving mechanism requires at least two groups of system (MTS), which can drive micro carts by bidirectional XY actuators which were turned on and off utilizing electrostatic actuator and ratchet at suitable times, alternately holding and driving a mechanism. The micro cart, which has driving-wings shuttle. In another work [5], Fujimasa reported the and anti-reverse-wings attached to its central integrated actuator which was actuated by vibration and 'backbone', is driven by electrostatic actuator
A fully functional micro transportation system with strider-like movement of micro containers
2008 IEEE 21st International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 2008
This paper presents a novel micro transportation system (MTS), which can drive micro containers in both straight and curved paths, based on electrostatic and ratchet mechanism. The micro container, which has driving-wings and anti-reverse-wings attached to the central 'backbone', is driven by electrostatic actuator through the ratchet racks in perpendicular direction. The container with the length and width of 450µm and 250µm, respectively, moves like a water strider with desirable velocity up to 200µm/sec in the straight and curved paths. In order to create the smart and flexible MTS, the elemental modules, e.g. straight, turning and separation modules with the same size (6mm×6mm) have been developed. Therefore, different configurations of the MTS can be created flexibly by assembling the elemental modules.
Micro Transportation Systems: A Review
Modern Mechanical Engineering, 2011
This paper summarized and reviewed recent studies of micro transportation systems (MTS) in the MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical System) field. Micro transportation systems can be identified and classified into three categories based on the contact types between the objects and the actuators (i.e. liquid-based, solidbased and air-bearing type). Their advantages and disadvantages were also analyzed and compared. The authors have proposed and developed three types of solid-based MTS utilizing electrostatic comb-drive actuators and ratchet mechanisms to drive the micro container in straight and curved paths. These MTSs have been fabricated with silicon-on-insulator (SOI)-MEMS technology and tested successfully. In the near future, MTSs can be applied in different fields such as medicine (to classify and test blood cells), in bioengineering (to capture, sort and combine bio-cells, DNA), or in micro robot systems.
Single mask, simple structure micro rotational motor driven by electrostatic comb-drive actuators
Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 2012
We report a design and fabrication of a new micro rotational motor (MRM) using silicon micromachining technology with the overall diameter of 2.4 mm. This motor utilizes four silicon electrostatic comb-drive actuators to drive the outer ring (or rotor) through ratchet teeth. The novel design of the anti-reverse structure helps us to overcome the gap problem after deep reactive ion
Modeling of a High Force Density Fishbone Shaped Electrostatic Comb Drive Microactuator
The Scientific World Journal, 2014
This paper presents the design and evaluation of a high force density fishbone shaped electrostatic comb drive actuator. This comb drive actuator has a branched structure similar to a fishbone, which is intended to increase the capacitance of the electrodes and hence increase the electrostatic actuation force. Two-dimensional finite element analysis was used to simulate the motion of the fishbone shaped electrostatic comb drive actuator and compared against the performance of a straight sided electrostatic comb drive actuator. Performances of both designs are evaluated by comparison of displacement and electrostatic force. For both cases, the active area and the minimum gap distance between the two electrodes were constant. An active area of 800 × 300 μm, which contained 16 fingers of fishbone shaped actuators and 40 fingers of straight sided actuators, respectively, was used. Through simulation, improvement of drive force of the fishbone shaped electrostatic comb driver is approxim...
Electrostatic Comb-Drive Actuator with High In-Plane Translational Velocity
Micromachines, 2016
This work reports the design and opto-mechanical characterization of high velocity comb-drive actuators producing in-plane motion and fabricated using the technology of deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate. The actuators drive vertical mirrors acting on optical beams propagating in-plane with respect to the substrate. The actuator-mirror device is a fabrication on an SOI wafer with 80 µm etching depth, surface roughness of about 15 nm peak to valley and etching verticality that is better than 0.1 degree. The travel range of the actuators is extracted using an optical method based on optical cavity response and accounting for the diffraction effect. One design achieves a travel range of approximately 9.1 µm at a resonance frequency of approximately 26.1 kHz, while the second design achieves about 2 µm at 93.5 kHz. The two specific designs reported achieve peak velocities of about 1.48 and 1.18 m/s, respectively, which is the highest product of the travel range and frequency for an in-plane microelectromechanical system (MEMS) motion under atmospheric pressure, to the best of the authors' knowledge. The first design possesses high spring linearity over its travel range with about 350 ppm change in the resonance frequency, while the second design achieves higher resonance frequency on the expense of linearity. The theoretical predications and the experimental results show good agreement.
2022 5th International Conference on Advanced Systems and Emergent Technologies (IC_ASET), 2022
Electrostatic actuators have a significant role in Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). Electrostatic comb drive actuator with trapezoidal-shaped geometry is reliable as compared to a rectangular shaped system because of maximum displacement and large driving force. The limitation in the use of the trapezoidal-shaped electrostatic actuating system is a pull-in phenomenon because of the angular effect and large driving voltage. In this research work, a trapezoidal-shaped comb-drive actuator with curved flexures is designed and analyzed to minimize driving voltage through the low stiffness of curved beams. With a driving voltage of 36.6V, displacement of 25μm is achieved in this research work. A comparison of these results with published works is also presented and discussed.