Xue Gaopeng, Toda Masaya, Li Xinghui, Li Bing, Ono Takahito
School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Aug 11;13(8):1287. doi: 10.3390/mi13081287.
This study presents an experimental demonstration of the motion characteristics of a comb-drive actuator fabricated from heterogeneous structure and applied for cryogenic environments. Here, a silicon wafer is anodically bonded onto a glass substrate, which is considered to be a conventional heterogeneous structure and is commonly adopted for fabricating comb-drive actuators owing to the low-cost fabrication. The displacement sensor, also with comb-finger configuration, is utilized to monitor the motion characteristics in real time at low temperatures. The irregular motions, including displacement fluctuation and lateral sticking, are observed at specific low temperatures. This can be attributed to the different thermal expansion coefficients of two materials in the heterogeneous structure, further leading to structural deformation at low temperatures. The support spring in a comb-drive actuator is apt to be deformed because of suspended flexible structures, which affect the stiffness of the support spring and generate irregular yield behavior. The irregular yield behavior at low temperatures can be constrained by enhancing the stiffness of the support spring. Finally, we reveal that there are limited applications of the heterogeneous-structure-based comb-drive actuator in cryogenic environments, and simultaneously point out that the material substrate of silicon on the insulator is replaceable based on the homogeneous structure with a thin SiO layer.
本研究展示了一种由异质结构制造并应用于低温环境的梳齿驱动致动器的运动特性的实验演示。在此，将硅晶片阳极键合到玻璃基板上，这被认为是一种传统的异质结构，并且由于制造成本低而通常用于制造梳齿驱动致动器。同样具有梳齿配置的位移传感器用于在低温下实时监测运动特性。在特定低温下观察到不规则运动，包括位移波动和横向粘连。这可归因于异质结构中两种材料不同的热膨胀系数，进而导致低温下的结构变形。梳齿驱动致动器中的支撑弹簧由于悬空的柔性结构而易于变形，这会影响支撑弹簧的刚度并产生不规则的屈服行为。低温下的不规则屈服行为可通过增强支撑弹簧的刚度来加以限制。最后，我们揭示了基于异质结构的梳齿驱动致动器在低温环境中的应用有限，同时指出基于具有薄SiO层的同质结构，绝缘体上硅的材料基板是可替代的。
