Author(s)

P. Di Barba, A. Saving & S. Wiak

Abstract

During the last decade, a renewed interest has grown about electrostatic motors in the microscopic scale, owing to the impressive developments in the technology of integrated electrostatics. Since friction has a crucial effect on micromotors efficiency, from the designer viewpoint it is important to identify new device geometries able to improve the mechanical response. After discussing the major sources of friction in a rotating microactuator, a case study is presented; in particular, a geometry reducing the dry friction is identified and discussed. 1 Introduction In principle, if a mechanical system is scaled down by a factor of 10f, mass - and hence inertial and gravitational forces - decrease by a factor of 10l Forces scaling as the area of the system, such as electrostatic interaction, will

Keywords