Remote Actuation of Independent Electrostatic Distributed Micromechanical Systems (DMMS) for a Wireless Microrobot

The realization of microrobots is one of the important exploration fields of research in microsystems. Many applications are expected, particularly in the field of microassembly and test of circuits in confined environments (M. Takeda, 2001). Towards the realization of a wireless microrobot, we report in this paper for the first time the successful asynchronous remote operation of two distributed micro mechanical systems (DMMS). The DMMS are made of a new version of the large stepwise motion electrostatic actuator realized in doped polysilicon and reported at MEMS 2002 (P. Basset et al., 2002). Each DMMS is composed of 1,700 actuators, presents a capacitance of 2 nF and a pull-in voltage of 20 V. Remote control is obtained by inductive coupling at 13.56 MHz thanks to an IC specially dedicated to that purpose. This circuit makes it possible to power but also to remote control a double electrostatic ciliary motion system (CMS) (M. Ataka et al., 1993), allowing a two degrees of freedom displacement. Voltages up to 100 V can be used. The receiver antenna, realized in thick electroplated gold on an epoxy substrate to prevent eddy current, is also presented. The emitter system needs 9 W to fully actuate the DMMS at a distance of 1 cm. The maximum actuation frequency is 20 Hz