Power and reliability improvement of an electro-thermal microactuator using Ni-diamond nanocomposite

A low-temperature stress-free electrolytic nickel (EL) deposition process with the addition of uniformly dispersed diamond nanoparticles (diameter < 0.5 μm) is proposed to fabricate cantilevers and electro-thermal microactuators to demonstrate the improvement of the device on reducing input power requirement and enhancing operation reliability. The fabrication results show that the nanodiamond particles are successfully dispersed in the electroplating nickel layers. By calibrating the resonant frequencies of nickel cantilevers with different concentrations of diamond nanoparticles, the E/ρ ratio of cantilevers can be enhanced 7.1 times with diamond nanoparticles of 2 g/l in the proposed electrolytic nickel (EL) deposition process. From displacement tests, the electro-thermal microactuator with nanodiamond particles of 2 g/l reduces 73 % power requirement of pure nickel device needed at the same output displacement of 3 μm. Also, the reversible displacement range is found to be expanded from 1.8 μm to 3 μm by adding nanodiamond particles of 2 g/l in the nickel electro-thermal microactuators.