CMOS integrated ciliary actuator array as a general-purpose micromanipulation tool for small objects

Abstract

The first micromachined bimorph organic ciliary array with on-chip CMOS circuitry is presented. This ciliary array is composed of an 8/spl times/8 array of cells each having four orthogonally oriented actuators in an overall die size of 9.4/spl times/9.4 mm. The polyimide-based actuators were fabricated directly above the selection and drive circuitry, Selection and activation of actuators in this array shows that integration was successful. The array was programmed to do simple linear and diagonal translations and squeeze-, centering-, and rotating-field manipulations. All three tasks were demonstrated using silicon pieces of various shapes and either 0.55 mm or 0.10 mm thick.