Adjustable static and dynamic actuation of clamped-guided beams using electrothermal axial loads

Abstract

The paper presents adjustable static and dynamic actuations of in-plane clamped-guided beams. The structures, of variable stiffness, can be used as highly tunable resonators and actuators. Axial loads are applied through electrothermal U-shaped and flexure beams actuators stacked near the edges of curved (arch) beams. The electrothermal actuators can be configurred in various ways to adjust as desired the mechanical stiffness of the structures; thereby controlling their deformation stroke as actuators and their operating resonance frequency as resonators. The experimental and finite element results demonstrate the flexibility of the designs in terms of static displacements and resonance frequencies of the first and second symmetric modes of the arches. The results show considerable increase in the resonance frequency and deflection of the microbeam upon changing end actuation conditions, which can be promising for low voltage actuation and tunable resonators applications, such as filters and memory devices. As case studies of potential device configurations of the proposed design, we demonstrate eight possibilities of achieving new static and dynamic behaviors, which produce various resonance frequencies and static displacement curves. The ability to actively shift the entire frequency response curve of a device is desirable for several applications to compensate for in-use anchor degradations and deformations. As an example, we experimentally demonstrate using the device as a resonant logic gate, with active resonance tuning, showing fundamental 2-bit logic functions, such as AND,XOR, and NOR.