Highly efficient electrocaloric cooling with electrostatic actuation

Parallel-plate electrostatic actuation with vertical hinges

A microactuating structure with vertical polyimide hinges has been designed, fabricated and tested. Unlike traditional microactuators, which are located on the substrate surface, this new actuation mechanism is capable of producing linear motion at a point far from the substrate. This advantage can make it possible to drive other out-of-plane folded structures for on-wafer or out-of-wafer appli...

MEM Analog Tunable Gratings by Electrostatic Actuation

Electrostatic actuation of silicon optomechanical resonators.

Cavity optomechanical systems offer one of the most sensitive methods for detecting mechanical motion using shifts in the optical resonance frequency of the optomechanical resonator. Presently, these systems are used for measuring mechanical thermal noise displacement or mechanical motion actuated by optical forces. Electrostatic capacitive actuation and detection have been shown previously for...

Energy Efficient Actuation with Variable Stiffness Actuators

Research effort in the field of variable stiffness actuators is steadily increasing, due to their wide range of possible applications and their advantages. In literature, various control methods have been proposed, solving particular problems in human-robot and robot-environment interaction applications, in which the mechanical compliance introduced by variable stiffness actuators has been show...

Nonlinear static and dynamic behaviors of a microresonator under discontinuous electrostatic actuation

This article studied static deflection, natural frequency and nonlinear vibration of a clamped-clamped microbeam under discontinues electrostatic actuation. The electrostatic actuation was induced by applying AC-DC voltage between the microbeam and electrode plate. In contrast to previous works, it was assumed that length of the electrode plate was smaller than that of the microbeam. In additio...