Design of a New Micro Linear Actuator Owning Two-phase No-cross Planar Coils

This paper presents a new micro linear actuator design. The North-South (NS) permanent magnet array configuration is assembled as the mobile part. The fixed part is designed to two-phase planar coils with no crossings avoiding interferences between overlapped conductors. The analytical calculation of the permanent magnet array verifies the feasibility of the finite element simulation. And then electromagnetic optimizations based on simulation to maximize the average thrust and minimize thrust ripple. In order to deal with millimeter level structure design, a microfabrication approach is adopted to process the new micro linear actuator in silicon material. The new micro linear actuator is able to perform millimeter level displacement strokes along a single axis in the horizontal plane. The experimental results demonstrate that the new micro linear actuator is capable of delivering variable strokes up to 5 mm with a precision error of 30 μm in position closed loop control and realizes the maximum velocity of 26.62mm/s with maximum error of 4.92%.