Design and implementation of a novel “polymer joint” for thermal actuator current and thermal isolation

This study presents a novel thermal isolation component "polymer joint" to reduce the current and heat flow (by conduction) between micro thermal actuators. An optical stage consisted of V-beam thermal actuators for optical-tracking and thermal-driven focal-length tunable micro polymer lens for optical-focusing is employed to demonstrate the present concept. To overcome the thermal coupling of these two actuators by heat-conduction, the two components fabricated by SOI wafer (Si˜150 W/m-k) are connected by the low thermal conductivity joints (polymer˜0.2 W/m-k). The displacement provides by the V-beam actuator is about ±13μm. The temperature difference is about 80°C measurement by infrascope. The variation of micro lens radius of curvature is about 1%.