Design and analysis of repulsive electrostatic driven MEMS actuators

For many astronomical systems, Adaptive Optics (AO) plays an important role. Here, we report some preliminary studies on MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System) Project for micro actuators in AO applications at the Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Science. This paper presents a few MEMS actuators based on repulsive electrostatic driven mechanism, which can achieve large out-of-plane strokes through eliminating the electrostatic pull-in effect. Design principles, including the layout and the physical dimension of electrodes, and FEA models are illustrated; it provides helpful guidance for designing electrostatic repulsive actuators for being implemented in Deformable Mirrors (DMs). Some repulsive electrostatic driven micro actuators are given, the analysis focus on the displacement versus applied voltage and resonant frequency. Repulsive electrostatic driven actuators can achieve large strokes and high resonant frequencies, they meet the important requirements for DMs.