548

JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 3, JUNE 2005

A Single-Layer PDMS-on-Silicon Hybrid

Microactuator With Multi-Axis Out-of-Plane Motion
CapabilitiesPart I: Design and Analysis
Yi-Chung Tung, Student Member, IEEE, and Katsuo Kurabayashi, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper proposes a new single-layer electrostatic

microactuator design that generates three-axis motion resulting
in vertical translation and out-of-plane tilting. The new actuator
design combines a micrometer-scale three-dimensional (3-D)
polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) structure fabricated using soft
lithography with comb drives processed using a single mask on a
silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer. The multi-axis actuation capability of the proposed actuator is enabled by coupling the in-plane
actuation motion of the comb drives with the elastic bending of
PDMS flexural microjoints. To predict the static and dynamic performance of the actuator, this paper develops a four-bar-linkage
model and applies Lagrangian dynamics theory. The developed
analytical model is validated using finite element analysis (FEA)
and allows us to perform parametric design of the actuator. The
analysis indicates that the proposed PDMS-on-silicon hybrid
actuator can yield the desired multi-axis actuation capability with
a dynamic bandwidth as large as 5 kHz.
[1378]
Index TermsComb-drive actuator, finite element analysis
(FEA), multi-axis microactuator, parametric design, PDMS-on-silicon microsystems.

I. INTRODUCTION

ICROMETER-SCALE actuation with multiple degrees

of freedom plays an essential role in many microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) applications, including
microrobotics [1], micromanipulation [2], [3], and microoptics systems [4][10]. Significant research efforts have been
made to develop electrostatic MEMS actuators capable of
multi-axis in-plane/out-of-plane motions [3], [4], [9][12].
However, the fabrication of these actuators is often challenging
and time-consuming, requiring multilayer structures [4], [6]
or relatively complex mechanisms [12]. Furthermore, their
assembly requires precise alignment and bonding of multiple
silicon substrates, adding more complexity to the laborious
fabrication processes.
Comb-drive actuators are commonly adapted in electrostatic
MEMS actuation devices as they can be fabricated using
CMOS-compatible standard silicon surface micromachining
and yield a large dynamic bandwidth [13]. The comb-drive
structure simply consists of interdigitated electrodes of a

Manuscript received July 8, 2004; revised August 27, 2004. This work was
supported by the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Subject Editor
C. Hierold.
The authors are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA (e-mail: tungy@umich.edu;
katsuo@umich.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JMEMS.2005.844761

rectangular finger shape that are engaged with each other and
mechanically compliant spring beams that suspend one of
the electrodes. Electrostatic force resulting from bias voltage
between the engaging electrodes drives their lateral motion.
Despite their common use in MEMS technology, the shortcoming of comb drives is that they predominately generate
one-dimensional (1-D) motion, which usually lies parallel to
the substrate plane [10], [11], [13][15]. This leads to the need
for the aforementioned complex fabrication processes.
For example, Kwon et al. [6] have recently presented an
asymmetric comb drive on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer.
It was fabricated by a three-step back and front side deep
reactive ion etch (DRIE) process, and it achieved out-of-plane
piston motion. Using both surface [Multiuser MEMS Processes
(MUMPS)] and bulk micromachining (DRIE), Piyawattanametha et al. [16] developed an angular vertical comb drive
to generate out-of-plane tilting motion with one degree of
freedom. Moreover, they integrated two sets of the actuators
to generate out-of-plane tilting motion in two orthogonal axes.
Xie et al. [17] also exploited curled hinges, which resulted
from residual stress between different materials, to construct
a similar vertically angled offset comb drive that yields tilting
motion. Walraven and Jokiel [12] constructed a spatial microstage that yields three degree-of-freedom motion [either
XYZ translation or piston-tip-tilt (PTT)] using the Sandia Ultraplanar MEMS Multilevel Technology (SUMMiT-V) silicon
surface micromachining process. With the same process, Hah
et al. [18] developed a comb-drive actuated micromirror array
that generates single degree-of-freedom motion (out-of-plane
tilting).
This paper proposes a novel polymer/silicon hybrid actuator
that allows multi-axis, out-of-plane vertical and tilting actuation
motions, only requiring a single silicon layer with comb drives.
The actuator design incorporates a 3-D polydimethylsiloxane
(PDMS) microstructure placed on a silicon device layer. With
this new actuator design, we theoretically demonstrate how the
integration of a 3-D PDMS microstructure can allow us to develop a new type of MEMS actuator. The performance of the
actuator can be substantially enhanced by the flexibility of the
polymer. This paper focuses on the design and analysis of the
proposed PDMS-on-Silicon hybrid microactuator.
II. HYBRID ACTUATOR DESIGN
Fig. 1 illustrates the actuator proposed in this paper. The
actuator is designed to translate the in-plane 1-D motion of

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549

Fig. 1. Schematic drawing of the PDMS-on-silicon hybrid actuator.

comb drives to the out-of-plane motion of a PDMS microstructure with multiple degrees of freedom. The actuator structure
consists of two major components: (1) multiple comb drives
fabricated on a SOI wafer; and (2) a PDMS micromotion translator connected to the comb drives. The PDMS micromotion
translator is composed of a micrometer-scale platform and four
connectors. Each of the PDMS microconnectors provides a
mechanical connection between the platform and a comb-drive
rotor beam via two thin flexural microjoints.
We assume that the PDMS micromotion translator is fabricated using soft lithography here [19]. PDMS is an organic
elastomer material widely used in a number of BioMEMS and
microfluidic applications [20][23] due to its excellent optical
properties ( 92% transmission for visible light [24]) and large
maximum strain limit near 40% [25], [26] (for silicon material,
it is 1%.) With its high optical transparency and mechanical
robustness, the PDMS micromotion translator can be an excellent structural component in optical MEMS applications.
Fig. 2 shows the details of the PDMS micro-connector with
its end attached to a comb drive rotor beam. This connector
plays a primary role in converting the in-plane motion of the
comb drive to the out-of-plane motion of the mechanically rigid
PDMS microplatform. The PDMS microconnector attached to
the electrically controllable comb drives is designed to achieve
precise nanopositioning and displacement multiplication. Systematically coupling the motion of each comb drive allows the
actuator to switch its modes in a programmable manner. For instance, simultaneously pulling the PDMS-silicon connections
by activating either all of the four comb drives (#1 to #4) or two
of them facing each other (e.g., comb drives #1 and #3 or #2
and #4) would cause vertical motion of the PDMS microplatform in Fig. 3(a). On the other hand, the PDMS microplatform
will generate out-of-plane tilting motion with only two orthogonal comb drives activated (#1 and #4). In addition, the opposite
tilting motion with respect to the same axis can be achieved by
combining the motions of another pair of comb drives (#2 and

Fig. 2. Simplified four-bar linkage model of the PDMS microconnector

attached to a comb-drive actuator rotor.

#3), which doubles the tilting angle range for each axis as shown
in Fig. 3(b). Similarly, the tilting around the other axis can be
achieved using other combinations of moving comb drives [e.g.,
comb drives #1 and #2; #3 and #4 as shown in Fig. 3(c)].

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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 3, JUNE 2005

is the Youngs Modulus of the beam material

where
(PDMS), and is the moment of inertia of the beam representing
the microjoint. Thus
(2)
Furthermore, the geometrical relations of the equivalent
four-bar linkage are given by
(3a)
(3b)
(3c)
(3d)

Fig. 3. Actuation modes resulting in (a) vertical motion, (b) tilting motion 1,
and (c) tilting motion 2 of the hybrid actuator.

and
are the initial lengths of the linkage in the
where
- and -directions, respectively, is the initial length of the
linkage, and is the initial angle of the linkage, is the length
of the flexural microjoint, is the length of the microconnector,
is the thickness of the flexural microjoint, and is the thickness of the microconnector. When the microconnector rotates by
, the mathematical expressions for the input in-plane
an angle
and the output vertical disdisplacement of the comb drive
are given by
placement of the PDMS platform
(4a)

III. HYBRID ACTUATOR MODELING AND FEA VALIDATION

In this section, we develop an analytical model based on a
four-bar-linkage mechanism to theoretically study the actuator
performance and compare calculations using this model to numerical results from finite element analysis (FEA). The developed analytical model allows for subsequent parametric design
with less computational time and expense than FEA.
A. Modeling of Hybrid Actuator
We model each of the four PDMS microconnectors as a
four-bar linkage with two rotational springs as shown in Fig. 2.
and
Each of the two flexural microjoints has thickness
length , which are smaller than the other dimensions of the
micromotion translator. This design leads to the deformation of
these flexural microjoints caused by bending motion about the
-axis. As a result, we treat each of them as a pin joint located
.A
at its middle position with a rotational spring constant
rigid-body boundary condition is applied for both ends of the
flexural microjoint as they are connected to either a stiff silicon
comb-drive rotor beam or a thicker PDMS layer.
Now, we use simple beam theory to evaluate the rotational
spring constant of the flexural microjoints. When subjected to
a bending moment , the microjoint attached to a rigid body
at its end, given by
yields a slope

(4b)
and
are the positions of the comb drive and the
where
PDMS microplatform in the coordinate system shown in Fig. 2.
Equations (4a) and (4b) allow us to evaluate how much the input
is multiplied through its translation to the verdisplacement
. Here, we define a displacement
tical output displacement
, which can be given by
multiplication ratio as

(5)
For a small rotational angle (i.e.,
ratio can be simplified as

), the multiplication

(6)

(1)

which can provide us an approximate value of multiplication

ratio for selected device design parameters in the simple

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TUNG AND KURABAYASHI: A SINGLE-LAYER PDMS-ON-SILICON HYBRID MICROACTUATORPART I

551

Fig. 4. FEA simulation results. (a) Vertical displacement of the PDMS micromotion translator. (b) von Mises stress distribution in the PDMS micromotion
translator.

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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 3, JUNE 2005

TABLE I
MATERIAL PROPERTIES USED FOR ANALYSIS

analytical form. With an input force

applied to the PDMS
microconnector from the comb drive, the resulting rotational
against the two rotational springs in series is given
angle
by

(7)
From (7), the vertical position of the PDMS microplatform is
. By knowing the rotational angle of the
also the function of
for a given applied force
, the dismicroconnector
placements of the PDMS micromotion translator in the horiand
can be calculated
zontal and vertical directions
and
is nonlinear,
from (4). Since the relation between
the analysis requires iterative calculations.
B. Model Validation Using FEA
To validate the developed four-bar linkage model, we performed FEA using the commercial software ANSYS Release
7.0 (ANSYS Inc., PA.) The symmetry of the PDMS micromotion translator allows us to analyze its mechanical behavior by
simply taking the quarter part, as shown in Fig. 4. In the simulation, we used the 3-D brick element SOLID45, each node of
which has three degrees of freedom. Also, a nonlinear finite element simulation option was employed to account for large deformations of the structure. There are two boundary conditions
we utilized to validate the developed model: (a) the displacement boundary condition, where a given displacement input is
applied to the end of the PDMS flexural linkage; and (b) the
force boundary condition, where the displacement input in (a)
is replaced with a given force input.
Table I shows the material properties used for both of the
four-bar linkage model and the FEA simulation. The results of
the FEA are shown in Fig. 4. The simulation indicates that the
thin joints of the PDMS microconnector yield much larger deformation than the thicker platform part. This allows us to safely
assume that the PDMS microplatform is a perfectly rigid body in
the model. In addition, local stresses are mainly concentrated in
the thin joints of the microconnector, which proves that they can
act as flexural joints during the actuator operation as assumed
in the analytical model. Fig. 5 compares the results obtained
from the analytical calculation and the FEA simulation under
(a) the displacement and (b) the force boundary conditions. It is
shown that the calculation based on the four-bar linkage model
is in a good agreement with the FEA simulation with an error
. Fig. 5(c) shows
less than 5% at input displacement up to 5
for the
the simulated displacement multiplication ratio
. Both analytical calculation and
input displacement up to 5
FEA simulation yield the multiplication ratio approximate 2 for
the selected device design parameters. The slight increase of

the multiplication ratio indicates the minor nonlinearity of the

PDMS micromotion translator performance. The results prove
that the PDMS micromotion translator not only translates the
in-plane displacement to the out-of-plane direction but also amplifies the magnitude of the input displacement from the comb
drive. The analytical model is shown to predict the device performance reasonably well for typical comb-drive actuation inputs.
IV. STATIC AND DYNAMIC PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
We use a simplified parallel-plate capacitor model [14] to predict the actuation behavior of the comb drives. Combing the
four-bar linkage model with the parallel plate capacitor model
allows us to model the performance of the entire hybrid actuator.
In this paper, the whole device structure is modeled as a discrete mass-spring system subjected to external load as shown in
Fig. 6. This model allows us to predict the relationship between
the in-plane electrostatic actuation force of the comb drive and
the vertical displacement of the PDMS microplatform. Here, the
is given by
external load generated by each comb drive
(8)
where is the gap between the adjacent comb fingers, is the
thickness of the comb fingers, is the total number of the comb
fingers, is the voltage applied across the engaging comb electrodes, and is the vacuum permittivity. There are two spring
constant sources in the model: (1) one from the folded beams of
the comb drive, whose spring constant is assumed to be invariant
with the rotor deflection; and (2) another from the elasticity
of the PDMS flexural microjoints, which has a spring constant
varying with the deflection. The spring constant of the folded
is given by [14]
suspension beam of the comb drive
(9)
where
is Youngs Modulus of silicon, is the thickness of
are the width and length of
the silicon structure, and and
the suspension beams, respectively. By calculating the displace(i.e., the in-plane displacement input to
ment of the rotor
the PDMS microconnector), the vertical output displacement of
is calculated for a given input
the PDMS microplatform
voltage .
Fig. 7 shows the calculated static performance of the actuator with the dimensions shown in Table II. Fig. 7(a) shows the
actuation force generated by each comb drive as a function of
given by (8). Fig. 7(b) shows the calculated
and
as
functions of when two facing comb drives are activated. Following the same approach, the tilting angle of the PDMS migenerated by two orthogonally activated comb
croplatform
drives can be calculated by
(10)
where is the distance between the two parallel lines connecting
a pair of orthogonal comb drives as shown in Fig. 3(b). The
as a function of is shown in Fig. 7(c).
calculated

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TUNG AND KURABAYASHI: A SINGLE-LAYER PDMS-ON-SILICON HYBRID MICROACTUATORPART I

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Fig. 5. Comparison of four-bar linkage analysis and FEA simulation of the PDMS micromotion translator performance using (a) displacement boundary condition,
and (b) force boundary condition. (c) Displacement multiplication ratio calculated from (a) and (b).

Fig. 6.

Discrete mass-spring system model for the entire device structure.

To study the dynamic performance of the hybrid actuator, we

have applied Lagranges equations to the developed analytical
model. The Lagrangian is defined as

is the mass of the comb drive rotor,

is the
where
is the spring constant
mass of the PDMS microplatform,
is the rotational
of the silicon suspension beam, and
spring constant of the PDMS flexural microjoint. The spring
is
constant of the folded suspension beam of the comb drive
given by (9), and the rotational spring constant of PDMS flexural
is equal to
given by (2). Therefore, the
microjoint
Lagranges equation of motion of the system can be written in
the form

(14)
and
given by (13), (8), and (4a) yields
Substituting ,
an expression for each term of (14) as

(11)
where and are kinetic energy and potential energy, respecof the designed system can be
tively. By definition, and
given by

(15a)

(12a)
(12b)
(15b)
Thus, the Lagrangian can be written as

(15c)
(13)

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(15d)

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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 3, JUNE 2005

Fig. 7. Theoretical static performance of the hybrid actuator as a function of applied actuation voltage. (a) Electrostatic force generated at each comb drive.
and vertical displacement of the PDMS microplatform
. (c) Tilting angle of the PDMS micro-platform
.
(b) In-plane displacement of comb-drive rotor

1X

1Z

TABLE II
NOMINAL VALUES OF THE ACTUATOR DESIGN PARAMETERS USED FOR
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

1

Consequently, the resulting equation of motion for the system

without damping can be expressed as

(18)
Moreover, the viscous damping term is added to the equation
of motion for evaluating the performance of the damped system
as

The equations derived above shows the nonlinearity of the

system, which would be complex to analyze. For simplicity, the
first-order linearization is applied by assuming

(16)

(19)
where is the rotational damping coefficient. For a sinusoidal
voltage excitation at an angular frequency , the applied voltage
can be written as
(20)

Then each term in the equation of motion can be simplified as

(17a)
(17b)
(17c)

where
is the dc offset voltage. Fig. 8 shows the calculated
time-domain vertical velocity and displacement of the hybrid
actuator with two facing comb drives activated at 1 kHz when
. The calculation assumes a low damping system
, where can be calculated by
with the damping ratio
(21) shown at the bottom of the next page.
Fig. 8(c) shows little distortion in the displacement profile
with respect to the sinusoidal actuation signal, indicating a good
linearity of the actuation motion. Fig. 9 shows the calculated

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Fig. 8. Predicted time-domain dynamic performance of the actuator using the developed model. (a) Input actuation voltage signal. (b) Vertical velocity of the
PDMS microplatform. (c) Vertical displacement of the PDMS microplatform.

V. PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS

Fig. 9. Calculated amplitude spectrum of vertical displacement of the hybrid

actuator.

vertical displacement spectrum of the hybrid actuator at actuation frequencies between 500 Hz and 10 kHz with various values
of the damping ratio. All the calculations presented here have
been performed with the device dimensions shown in Table II.
The calculation predicts that the resonant frequency of the actuator is about 4.86 kHz.

The actuator capable of multi-axis out-of-plane motion may

find broad applications. The performance requirement is different depending on each application. For example, fast out-ofplane actuation capability with wide bandwidth ( 1 kHz) is required for a confocal scanning microscope to observe biological phenomena occurring on the microsecond timescale [27].
For dense wavelength-division-multiplexed (DWDM) components, actuation of a mirror with a large static scan angle (e.g.,
at 40 V) is needed [28]. To observe how the proposed actuator can be designed to fulfill the different requirements, we
study the sensitivity of its performance with respect to the device design parameters using the developed model. Since the
and natural frequency of actuoutput vertical displacement
ators are most commonly specified for various applications [7],
[16], [28][29], we choose them as the performance evaluation
parameters in our analysis.
We first took the values of the design parameters in Table II
as nominal ones in our parametric analysis, which yield a natural frequency about 5 kHz and an vertical displacement of apat a 40 V peak-to-peak voltage applied on
proximately 5
each of two facing comb drives. Then we varied each of the design parameters from 0.6 to 1.4 times its nominal value. The
calculated results are shown in Fig. 10 and Fig. 11 and indicate that the static vertical displacement and the natural freand width
of the
quency are most sensitive to the length

(21)

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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 3, JUNE 2005

analysis, the microactuator can be designed to yield a fast response and large out-of-plane displacement at a relatively small
actuation voltage.
VI. CONCLUSION

Fig. 10. Predicted variation of static vertical displacement of the hybrid

actuator with design parameters.

Fig. 11. Predicted variation of natural frequency of the hybrid actuator with
design parameters.

comb-drive suspension beam. In general, there exists a tradeoff

between
and the natural frequency with the varying paramincreases with an increasing value of
eters. For instance,
while the natural frequency becomes smaller at the same time.
This tradeoff results from the reciprocal relationship between
the displacement and the natural frequency for a given mechanical stiffness of the entire system. The actuator design process
needs to account for this tradeoff. However, it is not observed
for and . The decrease of the spacing between the comb fingers increases the actuation force at constant applied voltage,
and decreases the mass of the structure at the same time. This
and the natural freleads to a simultaneous increase of both
quency. Similarly, the decrease of flexural microjoint thickness
leads to the same result due to the decrease of both of the
structural stiffness and mass. The minimum values of these parameters would be mainly limited by the fabrication capability.
By carefully choosing the device dimensions according to the

This paper has proposed a new electrostatic actuator incorporating a 3-D PDMS microstructure that can achieve multiaxis out-of-plane motion driven by simple single-layer silicon
comb drives. A mechanical model of the PDMS structure using
a four-bar linkage analogy was developed and validated by FEA
simulation. Combing this four-bar linkage model and a parallel-plate capacitor model for the comb drives, the static and
dynamic performances of the entire actuator were evaluated.
Parametric analysis of the static vertical displacement and natural frequency of the proposed actuator were also conducted to
study the influence of design parameters on them. The micro
actuator with dimensions that we select is expected to yield a
and an out-of-plane tilting movertical motion of nearly 5
tion of 1.2 at a 40-V dc actuation voltage, and a resonant frequency of about 5 kHz. All the analytical models developed in
this work effectively serve for predicting the actuator performance in the parametric analysis. With its estimated fast dynamic response and multi-axis motion capability with relatively
large displacement, the proposed PDMS-on-silicon hybrid actuator is promising for various MEMS applications requiring
on-chip actuation functions.
This paper demonstrates the technological potential of
combining the polymer material (PDMS) and silicon MEMS
devices. The unique material properties of the polymer can
increase the functionality of various MEMS devices with a
simple structural design. The flexibility of the polymer would
help a MEMS actuator generate large displacement at a limited
actuation force. Its mechanical robustness would increase the
device reliability. In addition, the polymer material can be used
for optical components such as optical lenses [30] and gratings
[31] due to its optical transparency, and can help achieve
reconfigurable microoptical devices embedded with electronically controllable silicon-based actuators. Consequently, the
presented results promote the development of a wide variety of
novel polymer/silicon hybrid MEMS devices.
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Yi-Chung Tung (S02) received the B.S. and M.S.

degrees in mechanical engineering from the National
Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 1996 and 1998,
respectively. His Masters degree research is focused on piezoelectric actuator design, piezoelectric
MEMS device analysis, and fabrication.
He is currently a Ph.D. degree candidate in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor. His Ph.D. studies include polymer and
silicon hybrid MEMS devices design and fabrication,
as well as their applications in microoptics and biological detection.

Katsuo Kurabayashi (M98) received the B.S.

degree in 1992 in precision machinery engineering
from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and the
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in materials science and
engineering with an electrical engineering minor
from Stanford University, CA, in 1994 and 1998,
respectively. His dissertation work focused on
measurement and modeling of the thermal transport
properties of electronic packaging and organic materials for integrated circuits under the contract with
the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC).
Upon completion of the Ph.D. program, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, as a Research Associate for 1 year.
In January 2000, he joined the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he
is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering. At
Michigan, he mentors five doctoral students who are investigating thermal transport phenomena in MEMS structures and electronic devices, novel actuator,
and micromechanism design for MEMS optical detection devices, multiphysics
modeling, and characterization of RF MEMS, integration of biomolecular motors in NEMS/MEMS.
Dr. Kurabayashi is a recipient of the 2001 NSF CAREER Award.

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