Two-axis electrodynamic micropositioning devices

Highly dynamic positioning devices for small elements are an interesting field for microactuators. Fields of very promising application are microoptics and microbiology. Applications in microoptics are the biaxial positioning of microoptical chips, microlenses and prisms for beam shaping and deflection and in microbiology the movement of microtools for the manipulation of biological cells and microorganisms. For these applications two highly dynamic positioning devices are being developed which are capable of handling tight mechanical tolerances. The rotors of the integrated multi-axis drives with two degrees of freedom have a maximum motion range of 300 m. The maximum resonance frequency is over 1000 Hz. The actuators use the electrodynamic motion principle. The technologies of wet chemical etching of silicon and galvanic batch processes are used. Furthermore this paper describes a method which can be used to predict the dynamic and static characteristics of electrodynamic actuators with a few input parameters.