Lower driving voltage for V-shaped Electrothermal Microactuator based on the surface sputtering process

Abstract

This research proposes a method to reduce the resistance of silicon-based V-Shaped Electrothermal Microactuator (VEM) by applying a surface sputtering process. Four VEM counterparts are fabricated by the traditional SOI-MEMS technology, three of them are processed additionally by sputtering technique to deposit a thin layer of platinum on top surface with different sputtering time, and the other is non-sputtering. Measured results show that the average resistance of sputtered structures is approximately 1.16, 1.55 and 2.4 times lower than the non-sputtering sample, corresponding to the sputtering time of 1.5, 3 and 6 minutes. The displacements of the VEM are calculated and simulated to evaluate the advantages of the sputtering method. The simulation result confirmed that the maximum displacement of sputtered VEM is almost 1.45 times larger than that of non-sputtering ones in the range of voltage from 8 V to 20 V. The experimental displacements are also measured to validate the better performance of sputtered samples.