Long travel parallel plate electrostatic actuator

We report on a novel long travel actuator architecture based on a folded suspension with an actuating force applied along initially curved suspension beams also used as motion amplifiers. The straightening of the beams is transformed into the lateral motion of the actuator. Combination of stiffening type mechanical and softening type electrostatic nonlinearities leads to the voltage-displacement dependence of the saturation type. The hierarchy of models includes an exact extensible elastica description and reduced order models. Actuators of various configurations were fabricated using SOI technology. The comparison between the experimental and model results reveals good agreement between the two.