2-DoF twisting electrothermal actuator for Scanning Laser Rangefinder application

This paper reports the design, modeling and characterization of a 2-DoF twisting electrothermal (ET) actuator for reducing parasitic motion in the application of an SOI-CMOS-MEMS-based Scanning Laser Rangefinder (SLR). A schematic-based model was built using a hierarchical MEMS behavioral model library (NODAS) to develop the concept of independently actuating two parallel metal-polysilicon-oxide CMOS-MEMS vertical electrothermal actuators for scanning control. The small in-plane parasitic motion, which is essential for laser alignment, is less than 2 μm. The optical scanning range of 31° about the y-axis and 20° about the x-axis were obtained at 8.6 mW and 14.7 mW, respectively, with a small device footprint of 191 μm - 156 μm.