Design and Characterization of a Large Displacement Electro-thermal Actuator for a New Kind of Safety-and-Arming Device

The design, fabrication and characterization of a distinctive electro-thermal MEMS safety-and-arming device are presented in this paper. The device is comprised of a V-shape actuator and a micro lever. The V-shape actuator can generate a large output force but small displacement; thus, it is necessary to design a micro lever to amplify the insufficient displacement, which can broaden the device applications in different fields. The temperature distribution, the maximum displacement and the step response time of the actuator are analyzed and validated by the finite element analysis software ANSYS. The whole device is fabricated on SOI (Silicon-on-Insulator) wafer, and MUMPs process is introduced. The characterized performance of the device shows output displacement at more than 150 μm within 17 V driving voltage, and the consuming power is about 1.53 W. The chip size is about 5 × 5 × 0.5 mm3, which can be easily integrated with other micro devices.