Integrated Actuation, Alignment, and Latching for Reconfigurable Assembled 3D MEMS
Principal Investigators Carol Livermore and George Barbastathis
"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
The intellectual merit of this research lies in the creation of a new, widely-applicable method for creating complex 3D MEMS from readily-fabricated, foldable 2D precursors, and in the quantitative analysis and practical demonstrations that will validate the method's significant performance capabilities. In particular, the focal point of the intellectual merit is the creation and demonstration of a new mechanical latching methodology to locate the 2D precursors permanently or reconfigurably in their proper positions with respect to one another, as determined by the system's design requirements. The merit of this research is reinforced by its founding on prior, successful modeling and experimental research on cascaded mechanical alignment mechanisms for MEMS, and by the integration of the novel latching mechanisms into a complete system for actuating, aligning, and latching the structures together. Further intellectual merit lies in the uniqueness and simplicity of the proposed integrated approach which enables a diverse range of possible 3D structures to be created using a much simplified microfabrication and assembly process; and powerful applications research for practical systems and as an enabling tool for further research. The intellectual merit of the proposed research is anchored on the PIs' qualifications in MEMS, assembly, and optics, which make them uniquely suited to conduct this research.
Latching research will be organized as (1) design, analysis, and demonstration of latching mechanisms that are fabricated and then function in tandem with the actuation and alignment mechanisms that locate the precursors; (2) design, implementation, and experimental characterization of integrated systems that assemble via coupled actuation, alignment, and latching; (3) theoretical and experimental evaluation of their capabilities and limitations, including as a subordinate goal the quantitative measurement of structural positioning accuracy as a function of structure complexity and anisotropy; and (4) identification and measurement of the errors in the assembly process, and the identification and demonstration of alternate designs such as different hinges or latch structures to reduce those errors.
The broader impacts of this research are in the student involvement, the broad dissemination of results, and in the new outreach activities that the research will enable. It will provide an excellent opportunity for both graduate and undergraduate students to participate in multidisciplinary, multi-scale research, preparing them for a wide range of future careers. The research results and design protocols that emerge from this project will be widely disseminated to maximize scientific, technological and entrepreneurial impact. Finally, the results will be brought to younger under-represented groups, particularly women, through presentations and design activities in which students are challenged to envision fundamental physics underpinnings, scale-dependence, utilization, and applications.
The proposed project will enable innovative, high-impact research on broadly-applicable solutions to the challenging and long-standing question of how best to assemble complex 3D MEMS with minimal cost, minimal difficulty, and maximum geometric accuracy. Through the proposed technical research and the proposed educational activities, the project will simultaneously enable new knowledge, new systems, and new applications while helping to draw a new generation of students into the fields of engineering and small-scale systems.
