Scaling of folded electrothermal actuators

Scaling of folded electrothermal actuators for optical applications in arrays from 1 mm to 50 ¿m pitch is presented. A 1-D model of a folded electrothermal actuator is presented to demonstrate the inverse scaling law for power with array pitch and linear scaling for rotational scan range. Metal/oxide bimorph actuators with discrete heaters are shown to have up to 26% higher thermal sensitivity than metal/oxide/polySi multimorphs with distributed heating.