Design of Novel Sequential Engagement Vertical Comb Electrodes for Analog Micromirror

The vertical comb-drive actuator (VCA) is a promising component to drive analog as well as scanning micromirrors. This work demonstrates the concept of using ldquosequential engagement of vertical comb electrodesrdquo to improve the linearity and to maximize the deflection for analog micromirror. This concept is achieved by varying the in-plane distribution of comb electrodes. The simulation and experiment results of vertical comb-drive actuator VCA with four different electrode-distribution designs demonstrated the feasibility of this study. In comparison, a modified (curved-profile) VCA was remarkably improved the performance of conventional (straight-profile) VCA. Experiments show that the curved-profile VCA improves the nonlinearity by 34% and increases the maximum angular motion for 2.3-fold.