Design and experimental characterization of the chevron-type bi-stable actuator for optical switch applications

This paper proposes a new chevron type bi-stable MEMS actuator using hinges and coupling bar for the improvement of the stable latch-up operation. The thickness of the hinge is determined as 2.6 /spl mu/m oriented in the diagonal direction based on the analytical results for the buckling actuation with low voltage operation. The proposed equivalent stiffness modeling is in a good agreement with the FEA using ANSYS. Considering the effect of the hinge thickness reduction into the equivalent stiffness modeling, the operation performance is analyzed. The voltage required for the bi-stable actuation is also calculated, which predicts 36.1 V and 37.4 V as the voltages of the forward and backward actuation for the stroke 60 /spl mu/m, respectively.