Mansour Mohamed Abdelsalam, Elsayed Mustafa M, Ali Alaa M, Toraya Abdelrahman, Gaber Noha
Zewail City of Science and Technology, Giza, 12578, Egypt.
Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CNRS, Institut FEMTO-ST (UMR 6174), Besançon, France.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 25;15(1):27023. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-11763-8.
The past decade has seen the rapid development of microthermal actuators designs; this is due to their wide usage in various sectors such as biomedical applications and communication. This study presents the experimental assessment, fabrication, and numerical simulation of a novel thermal actuator device applying the amplification theory to achieve competitive overall performance. The device consists of two L-shape lever and half-bridge amplification mechanisms accompanied by microthermal actuators forming all a compliant system. The input displacement is amplified at the output by about 3.55 as a multiplication ratio. Experimental characterization has been performed over a wide voltage range reaching 15 V and achieving 19 μm actuation. Considering how the material's properties change with temperature and their effect on the simulation results has been proven critical upon comparing experimental with the numerical results. The simulation has shown consistency with experimental results only when employing temperature-dependent models up to a voltage of 12 V achieving 12.9 μm actuation, unlike assuming constant parameters which is widely used in literature that shows noticable deviation throughout characterization range. Additionally, when designing an effective micro electrothermal actuator, there are other parameters that need to be considered besides high output displacement. Therefore, the comparison with other designs has included all the main specifications that are of concern. The performance is discussed based on the main features of any thermal actuator: displacement, temperature, area, and applied voltage, all combined in a performance evaluation index (PEI). The importance of this index is that it evaluates the overall effectivness of a thermal actuator, whereas one can have excellent performance for one of aforementioned features at the expense of the others, which may degrade the total assessment. Our device shows the highest value of this index of 0.0021 μm/mm/K/V at applied voltage of 10 V mapping to the lowest temperature profile at 617.5 K and smallest area among its credible counterparts.
在过去十年中，微热致动器设计得到了快速发展；这归因于它们在生物医学应用和通信等各个领域的广泛应用。本研究展示了一种新型热致动器装置的实验评估、制造和数值模拟，该装置应用放大理论以实现具有竞争力的整体性能。该装置由两个L形杠杆和半桥放大机构组成，并伴有微热致动器，共同构成一个柔顺系统。输入位移在输出端被放大，放大倍数约为3.55。在高达15 V的宽电压范围内进行了实验表征，实现了19μm的驱动。在将实验结果与数值结果进行比较时，已证明考虑材料特性如何随温度变化及其对模拟结果的影响至关重要。仅当采用与温度相关的模型，在高达12 V的电压下实现12.9μm的驱动时，模拟结果才与实验结果一致，这与文献中广泛使用的假设恒定参数不同，后者在整个表征范围内显示出明显偏差。此外，在设计有效的微电热致动器时，除了高输出位移外，还需要考虑其他参数。因此，与其他设计的比较包括了所有令人关注的主要规格。基于任何热致动器的主要特性：位移、温度、面积和施加电压，对性能进行了讨论，所有这些都包含在一个性能评估指标（PEI）中。该指标的重要性在于它评估了热致动器的整体有效性，因为对于上述特性之一可能具有优异性能，但却以牺牲其他特性为代价，这可能会降低总体评估。我们的装置在10 V的施加电压下显示出该指标的最高值为0.0021μm/mm/K/V，对应于617.5 K的最低温度曲线，并且在其可靠的同类产品中面积最小。
