A magnetically driven linear microactuator with new driving method

Electromagnetically driven microactuators are of interest because they have the potential to generate large deflections. Thus, we have been studying magnetically driven microactuators. This time, a magnetically driven linear microactuator has been newly developed by using microfabrication techniques. The microactuator is composed of a mobile microplatform (mover) with some permanent magnets (PMs) and a stator with a large number of planar coils. In this paper, two types of microplatforms are fabricated and compared with each other. Furthermore, static and dynamic characteristics of the magnetically driven linear microactuator are discussed.