Capillary Force Actuators

(The following is proprietary information that the University of Virginia requests not be released to persons without permission of the inventor, Prof. Carl Knospe.) Microactuators play a critical role in the development of micro electromechanical systems (MEMS), converting signals from electronic components into forces acting upon the physical world. They have found application in pumps and valves in micro total analysis systems (-TAS) and inkjet print heads, in optical switches and scanners, in variable capacitances and inductances for telecommunication, and in hard disk drive heads, among other devices. Although a variety of actuation technologies are available for MEMS, the force capability in each case results in relatively large actuators and limited stroke. Capillary force actuation is an entirely new technology for MEMS that can achieve significantly greater forces (10 100 times) than that of similarly sized MEMS actuators. Capillary force actuators (CFA) operate on a novel principle. As illustrated in Figure 1, they employ a liquid bridge between two surfaces. The surfaces contain electrodes covered with a very thin dielectric layer. Upon application of a voltage across the electrodes, the fluids contact angle upon the surface changes, a phenomenon previously observed and referred to as electrowetting on dielectric. The change in contact angle results in a change in the bridges capillary pressure and therefore force acting on the surfaces. In addition to significantly greater forces at low voltage, capillary force actuators possess other advantages over conventional choices for microscale actuation. The total movement achievable using a CFA is greater than that achieved with other actuators typically employed in MEMS. Because of its greater effectiveness, the voltage necessary for an actuation task is significantly lower (one tenth to one half) with CFA. Furthermore, out-ofplane forces can be easily achieved by CFA. Many MEMS applications require forces normal to the device plane, however, this is difficult to achieve with conventional MEMS actuators without sacrificing force capability or stroke. Figure 1: Schematic of a capillary force actuator (not to scale)

To illustrate how powerful capillary forces are, consider the following example. Let us compare the capillary pressure exerted by an aqueous bridge between two hydrophilic surfaces ( ) placed 2 m apart to the electrostatic pressure exerted by a MEMS parallel plate actuator with the same spacing. To match the capillary pressure, the electrostatic actuator would require 215 volts. For a 10 m spacing, 480 volts would be needed to generate the same force. If the surfaces were separated by 50 m, over 1000 volts is needed to match the capillary force! Microscale Actuation An Overview A variety of actuation principles are available for MEMS. These may be classified in four families: electrostatic, electromagnetic, piezoelectric, and thermal. Each technology has relative advantages and disadvantages with respect to force capability, power required, bandwidth, and device manufacture. The most commonly used MEMS actuators belong to the electrostatic family, including comb and parallel plate configurations, among others. These actuators are generally simple and do not require special material or difficult-to-manufacture elements (e.g., ferrous cores or conductive coils). For small strokes (<1 m), the parallel plate configuration, shown in Figure 2a, is often employed. For larger strokes (in-plane), a comb configuration is preferred, see Figure 2b. Electrostatic Actuators - Principle of Operation To understand the benefits of capillary force actuators it is helpful to first consider the operational principles and limitations of electrostatic actuators. In both the parallel plate and comb configurations, the force generated follows the formulae (1) where C is the capacitance of gap between the electrodes, A represents its effective area, h is the gap length, and is permittivity of free space. The variation in the capacitance with displacement, , is due to different mechanisms in the two actuator configurations. For the parallel plate configuration, the capacitance changes with displacement because the plate spacing, h, is altered. As a consequence, this mechanism requires that the gap spacing must be larger than stroke. (One advantage of the comb

Figure 2: Electrostatic actuator configurations. (a) parallel plate, and (b) comb drive

configuration is that it breaks this link between gap dimension and stroke, allowing the stroke to be many times the capacitive gap.) Unless the stroke needed is small ( 1 m), the force achieved must be quite low as it is inverse quadratically dependent on gap (2)

It should be noted that the working stroke is often limited to one third of the plate spacing as pull-in instability prevents greater utilization. With the necessary stroke specified, the designer has two avenues to increasing the achievable force of the parallel plate configuration, as Eqn. (2) indicates: larger voltage and greater plate area. The breakdown field strength of the gap ultimately limits the first of these. But, more importantly, the voltage level desirable or practical for an integrated circuit device (10-20 volts) is usually much lower than that prescribed by electrical breakdown. Since force achieved is proportional to voltage squared, this implies that the actual energy densities in the capacitive gap (equivalent to pressure) are far less than the theoretical values provided in the literature, which are based on breakdown field. Thus, the full force capabilities of these actuators are rarely realized. For the comb configuration, the change in capacitance with displacement is due to a change in the capacitive area, A, see Figure 2b. As a result, the spacing between comb teeth, h, may be made much smaller than the actuator stroke, boosting force capacity. In practice, manufacturing requirements typically limit the spacing to several microns. Achievable stroke for the comb configuration is limited by a lateral instability referred to as side snap-over. This instability results from the significant change in capacitance that occurs with lateral motion. The avenues by which a designer might improve comb force capability (especially decreasing h) all result in a greater tendency toward lateral instability. This analysis provides some insight into the desirable properties for a MEMS electrostatic actuator: displacement resulting in a capacitance variation via a change in the capacitive area (similar to comb actuators), thus not directly limiting actuator stroke, negligible variation of capacitance with lateral displacement (similar to parallel plate actuators), eliminating lateral instability a capacitive element with sub-micron thickness and high dielectric constant so as to greatly increase the capacitive energy stored and force produced. In the next section, we will show that CFA possesses each of these properties.

Capillary Force Actuation: An Electrostatic Perspective The basic principle of operation and the advantages of CFA may be understood by considering this technology in the same fashion as electrostatic devices. That is, an

examination of the capacitive variation alone is particularly useful. Later, we will consider the electrohydrodynamic aspects of the actuation principle. The capacitive element in CFA is a solid dielectric layer on the electrode surface. This layer can be manufactured so as to have a dielectric constant, , much greater than that of air (4 40 times), and a thickness, , that is a small fraction of the gap in comb drives (e.g., =50 nm in comparison to 2 m comb gaps). The area of the dielectric element that stores energy (and consequently determines capacitance) is that area wetted by the liquid bridge. The difference in electrical potential occurs chiefly across this dielectric layer since the liquid is chosen to be significantly more conductive than the dielectric layer. As the volume of liquid is conserved, a virtual displacement ( ) of one surface away from the other results in a change in wetted area, and hence capacitance, and thus implies a variation in the capacitance with displacement, specifically (3) where and are the permittivity and thickness of the dielectric layer. A comparison of the CFA capacitance variation (Eqn. 3) to that of parallel plate electrostatic actuator (Eqn. 2) indicates the benefits of CFA. The ratio is . Since and , the force generated by CFA at a given (low) voltage will be more than one hundred times that of a parallel plate electrostatic actuator. (A similar conclusion holds for the comb configuration.) Device Physics For the scale considered, gravity may be ignored as it has negligible effect. In static equilibrium without applied electric field, the energy is that of the surfaces alone and the capillary bridge satisfies Laplaces equation (constant mean curvature) subject to the boundary condition at the contact line dictated by Youngs equation, (4) which expresses the contact angle of the liquid ( ) between the liquid, solid, and vapor phases. in terms of the interfacial energies

For this discussion, we may consider the liquid bridge as perfectly conducting. High liquid conductivity aids both actuator gain and bandwidth, as a simple equivalent circuit model indicates. With the wide range of liquids and dielectrics available, liquid conductivity 5 to 15 orders of magnitude greater than that of the dielectric may be achieved. When voltage is applied, the electric field results in electrohydrodynamic forces on the fluid, as outlined herein. The electric potential results in a build up of a charge double layers at the dielectric / electrode interface and the dielectric / liquid interface, with free charge in the conducting bridge and electrode, and polarization charge in the dielectric. The capacitance of this arrangement will be essentially equal to that of the dielectric layer

itself. From an electromechanical viewpoint, the presence of free charge in the liquid, interacting with the electric field, imparts electrohydrodynamic forces to the fluid. In the perfectly conducting case, free surface charge in the liquid bridge screen the electric field from the bridges interior and charge only appear at the liquid surface. In this case, the tangential component of the electric field is zero at the liquids surface. Denote the normal component as . The force acting upon an infinitesmal portion of the surface dA is directed along the outward normal with a pressure given by .

The normal electric field, En, at the liquid-vapor interface is negligible except very close to the contact line. Excluding that region, we may state that no surface force acts upon the liquid-vapor interface in the case of a conducting bridge. Along the solid-liquid interface En is uniform, with the exception of near the contact line. As the contact line is approached on either interface, the charge density and field increase rapidly. On the scale of the device considered, the three-phase contact line may be treated as one-dimensional. In this spirit, integration of Maxwells stress tensor in the vicinity of the contact line yields a contact line force (per unit length). It has been shown that the component tangential to the solid surface is given by

where Vd is the electrical potential across the dielectric layer. A balance of the contact line force, and the interfacial tensions acting upon the contact line yields the LippmannYoung equation, (5) which describes the change in contact angle with voltage. From a modeling perspective, we may either employ the Lippmann-Young relation or place the contact line force density in the momentum equation, as these are equivalent. The decrease in contact angle due to the applied voltage results in a change in capillary bridge shape. As this is the only effect of the electrical field, the new bridge shape profile will belong to the Plateau sequence, the family of curves that are the known axisymmetric solutions to the Laplace equation (unduloids, nodoids, catenoids, cylinder). The details of this phenomenon are too involved to examine here, but have previously been investigated by Knospe. In the case of pancake bridges, a simple analysis is available and illustrative. Laplaces equation states that the capillary pressure is related to the bridge radius, R, and the radius of curvature of the bridge surfaces profile, Rp, via . It is reasonably accurate to approximate the profile as a circular arc. In this case, . Employing Eqn. (5) yields the relationship between voltage across the dielectric and the capillary pressure acting on the solid surface:

Thus, application of voltage results in a change in capillary pressure, hence force acting between the electrodes. (The bias term will be small in comparison to the variation in pressure.) Alternative Configurations: Depending on the application, materials used, and fabrication challenges, different configurations of the actuator are preferable. The configuration of Figure 1 has electrodes on both ends of the capillary bridge. Alternatively, both electrodes may be placed side-by-side or concentrically on one end of the bridge.