A micromotor using a kind of dielectric fluids

A new-type liquid driving electrostatic micromotor is proposed. One of the authors found that dielectric fluids such as dibutyl decanedionate which have some kind of chemical structure form jet flows in applied electrostatic fields. The proposed motor utilizes a propulsion force due to the jet flows and a simple structure driven by a simple DC power supply is realized. The motor has two types, "SE type" and "RE type". In this paper, SE type and RE type motors with different sizes are fabricated and their basic characteristics are experimentally investigated. It is shown that the SE type and the RE type motors of about 13 mm in diameter have the no-load rotational speed of 38 Md/s and 18 rad/s, respectively, when 6 kV is applied. It is also shown that their miniaturization, whilst maintaining the ratio of the rotor and the outer cylinder diameters constant, is able to improve their performance. In addition, the characteristics of SE and RE type motors are compared.