Single Crystal Silicon MEMS Microactuator for High Density Hard Disk Drive

A single crystal silicon MEMS microactuator for high density hard disk drives is described in this paper. The microactuator is located between a slider and a suspension, and drives the slider on which a magnetic head is attached. The MEMS actuator is fabricated by improved LISA process. It has an electrically isolated 20:1 (40μm thick, 2μm width) high aspect ratio structure directly processed from a single crystal silicon substrate. The overall dimension of the micro-actuator is 1.4mm by 1.4mm and by a thickness of 0.15mm. Experiments show that ±0.6 μm displacement stroke of the Read/Write magnetic head, which is attached on the MEMS actuator, can be achieved when input voltage is 40V. The dynamic performances of the MEMS actuator integrated with a Head Gimbal Assembly (HGA) are analyzed by FEM simulation. The simulation results demonstrated that the controllable in-plane resonance frequency of the MEMS actuator is 1.5 kHz, and the first uncontrollable out-of-plane resonance frequency of the MEMS actuator integrated with the HGA is 16.6kHz. The single crystal silicon microactuator has good shock reliability, and eliminates large material creep and thermal mismatch problems.