Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381

www.elsevier.com/locate/microrel

Application of polyimide to bending-mode

microactuators with Ni/Fe and Fe/Pt magnet
a,*
C.T. Pan , P.J. Cheng b, C.K. Yen a, C.C. Hsieh c,d

a
Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Center Nanoscience & Nanotechnology,
National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaoshiung 804, Taiwan
b
Department of Electrical Engineering, Nan Jeon Institute of Technology, Tainan County, 737, Taiwan
c
Center for Micro/Nano Technology Research, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
d
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yung-Ta Institute of Technology & Commerce, Ping-Tung 909, Taiwan

Received 26 October 2004; received in revised form 14 October 2005

Available online 19 January 2006

Abstract

Out-of-plane polyimide (PI) electromagnetic microactuators with different geometries are designed, fabricated and
tested. Fabrication of the electromagnetic microactuators consists of 10 lm thick Ni/Fe (80/20) permalloy deposition
on PI diaphragm by electroplating process, electroplating of copper planar coil with 10 lm thick, bulk micromachining,
and excimer laser selective ablation. They are fabricated by a novel concept to avoid the etching selectivity and residual
stress problems during wafer etching. A simulation model is created by ANSYS software to analyze the microactuators.
The external magnetic field intensity (Hext) generated by the planar coil is simulated by this software. Besides, to provide
bi-directional and large deflection angles of the microactuators, hard magnet Fe/Pt is deposited at low temperature of
300 C by sputtering onto the PI diaphragm to produce a perpendicular magnetic anisotropic field. This magnetic field
can enhance the interaction with Hext to induce attractive and repulsive bi-directional force to provide a larger displace-
ment. The results of the magnetic microactuators with and without hard magnetic are compared and discussed, respec-
tively. The preliminary result reveals that the electromagnetic microactuators with hard magnet exhibit a greater
deflection angle than that without one.
 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction applied as micromirror, delta-wing control [3,4], optic

With MEMS technique, size scale of microactuators
can be decreased efficiently and basic element of micro-
actuators can be integrated with integrated circuit (IC)
[1,2]. Microactuator is an important component for a
variety of applications such as on optics communication
and bio medication. Magnetic microactuators have been
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 7 5252000x4239; fax:
+886 7 5254299.
E-mail address: panct@mail.nsysu.edu.tw (C.T. Pan).
switch [5], micropump [6] and magnetic flux generator
[7]. The operation principle of permalloy magnetic mic-
roactuators was demonstrated and explained [8,9]. A
new electroless codeposition system for fabricating hard
magnet NdFeB and NiP was reported [10]. A magnetic
microacturator using electroplated permanent magnet
arrays has been designed, fabricated and characterized.
The vertical coercivity has been achieved up to
87.6 kA/m [11]. Integrated permanent magnet micro-
actuators have been fabricated using micro-machined
polymeric magnets [12].

0026-2714/$ - see front matter  2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.microrel.2005.10.015
1370 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381
PI is widely used in MEMS fields. The applications of
PI are promising [13]. The thickness of PI film is easily
controlled by changing the speed of spin coating. After
fully curing, PI shows excellent electrical, mechanical,
chemical and thermal properties as well as low Young’s
modulus [14]. Therefore, the PI microactuator has a
much better performance than conventional microactu-
ators made of silicon layer or silicon oxide layer. This
method will simplify the process and take less time to
accomplish as well.
Excimer laser ablation of polymer materials (PI,
polycarbonate, polyester. . .) has been successfully dem-
onstrated and proved [15]. It is useful in PCB drilling,
laser-LIGA, rapid prototyping and various microstruc-
tures manufacturing. Compared with other laser
machining, cold ablation is a unique character of exci-
mer laser micromachining. When excimer laser beam is
impinged on the surface of polymer, the chemical bond
is broken as the absorption of laser pulse energy. Thus,
precise removal of long chain molecules polymer with
small thermal effect is achieved [16].
Fig. 1. Schematic drawing of magnetic microactuator.
Electromagnetic microactuator has been a significant
growth in the field of microsystems. However, there still
has been existed a problem of huge power consumption.
Hence the study presents a high efficient electromagnetic
PI microactuator consisting of planar coil with aspect
ratio, Ni/Fe permalloy by microelectroplating, sputter-
ing hard magnet Fe/Pt with perpendicular magnetic
anisotropic field and excimer laser selective ablation.
PI has excellent mechanic strength and lower Young’s
modulus. Under the same actuation force, it leads to a
larger deflection. Besides, the Fe/Pt anisotropic field
can induce attractive and repulsive bi-directional force
to provide large force output and deflection angle. In
the following sections, the design concept and the result
of testing are presented.
2. Design and theory
Magnetic actuation force is known as a strong and
long range force compared with other driving methods
 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381 1371

Table 1
List of the PI diaphragm parameters for simulation
E t Density G PI plate (lm3)
Microactuator 2.94 GPa 0.35 1410 kg/m3 E/2(1 + t) 1000 · 1000 · 10

[3,4]. In the study, electromagnetic microactuator is
designed with Ni/Fe permalloy and Fe/Pt hard magnet
on the vibration PI diaphragm, respectively, to concen-
trate the magnetic flux and enhance magnetic force.
The driving method is using Ni/Fe permalloy to interact
with the magnetic field (Hext) induced by planar coil to
produce the magnetic force. The induced magnetic force
bends PI plate to produce deflection angles. The design
of the microactuator is schematically illustrated in
Fig. 1.
Besides, Ni/Fe permalloy is deposited on planar coil
as core materials. Since PI material has lower Young’s
modulus, it can offer a large deflection angle with low
power consumptions. This magnetic field can enhance
the interaction with Hext to induce attractive and repul-
sive bi-directional force to provide a large displacement.
Under a field of Hext perpendicular to the substrate,
the permalloy plate on the PI diaphragm will induce a
magnetization M along the direction of the easy axis.
We assume that the magnetization M of the permalloy
plate is fully saturated. This magnetization in Hext field
induces a torque Tm to rotate the permalloy plate. The
torque exerted on the permalloy plate by Hext can be
expressed as follows:
T m ¼ V p jM  H ext j ¼ LWTMH ext cos h
where Vp is equal to the volume of the permalloy plate
on PI diaphragm, L, W, T is dimensions of permalloy,
length, width, and thickness, respectively, (L · W ·
T:Vp), M is the magnetization of permalloy, h is the
out-of-plane deflection angle, Hext is external magnetic
field.
Two bending beams with a rectangular cross section
are designed to support PI plate. Besides, compared to
the mass of Ni/Fe on PI plate, the mass of the PI beam
and plate can be neglected. Thus Hook’s Law is applied
to the analysis of the deflection angle. The deflection
angle of the microactuators can be derived as follows:
6l  LWTMH ext  cos h
h¼
bt3  E
is proportional to beam width (b) and thickness of PI
diaphragm (t). The deflection angle of the PI diaphragm
can be obtained through iterative calculations of Eq. (2).
Besides, the resistance (R) of planar coil is inversely
proportional to wcoiltcoil (wcoil and tcoil are cross-section
area of the planar coils, respectively). A higher thickness
of a planar coil can reduce the value of R, by which the
input voltage and current can increase to generate a lar-
ger magnetic force output.
lcoil
R¼q ð3Þ
wcoil tcoil
where R is resistance, q is resistivity. lcoil,wcoil, and tcoil,
are the length, width, and thickness of the planar coil,
respectively.
3. PI diaphragm fabrication
In this study, the processing parameters of PI dia-
phragm are given below. (Table 2(a) and (b) and
Fig. 2). The residual stress in the thick PI diaphragm
can be significant if the PI is not treated correctly.
Next, PI diaphragm is patterned by excimer laser. In
this study, Exitech 8000 type of excimer laser worksta-
ð1Þ
tion is used as illustrated in Fig. 3. The excimer laser
is Lambda Physik COMPex–110 industrial type with
248 nm in wavelength, 400 mJ pulse energy, 25 ns pulse
duration time, and 100 Hz peak pulse repetition rate.
The approximate magnification from mask to workpiece
is 4 times. Under the scanning and repeat of laser
micromachining, one-fourth pattern in dimension is
transferred on the PI diaphragm.
Ablation parameters for different polymeric materials
such as laser fluence, shot number, and repetition rate
are tested. Fig. 4(a) shows the ablation rate (depth per
Table 2
Polyimide processing parameters
ð2Þ
Mechanical Material SP-341

where E is the Young’s module of PI material, l is the PI (a) Polyimide properties

beam length, t is the PI beam thickness, b is the PI beam Tensile strength 180 MPa
Elongation 80%
width.
Young’s modulus 2.9 GPa
The related parameters of PI for simulations are
listed in Table 1. From Eq. (2), it can be seen that the (b) Polyimide spinning rate and heating condition
maximum deflection angle of microactuator is deter- Spin Step 1 500 rpm 10 s
mined by many factors such as the magnetization of Step 2 3500 rpm 25 s
permalloy, mechanical properties, and geometry of the
PI beam. Also, it reveals that the stiffness of the beam Soft bake temperate 90 C 2 min
1372 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381
Fig. 2. Relation of curing temperature and time for PI material.
pulse; lm/pulse) versus fluence, and Fig. 4(b) reveals
that the ablation depth (lm) versus laser shot number.
It makes sense that higher laser energy absorbed by
material will result in higher ablation rate and ablation
depth at a constant repetition rate. Fig. 4(c) shows the
effect of laser repetition rate. It shows a constant abla-
tion rate per laser pulse at frequencies >10 Hz. It is
worth noticing that when frequencies >10 Hz is applied,
constant ablation rate per second is achieved.
Laser pulse energy higher than 200 mJ (per pulse) will
destroy Cr film on the conventional quartz mask signif-
icantly during excimer laser projection ablation. Fur-
thermore, higher pulse energy and repetition rate
(>60 Hz) cause cumulative heat in PI and permalloy,
which may tear off the permalloy plate due to the dis-
Fig. 3. Schematic drawing of the excimer laser machine system.
patch of thermal expansion coefficient between the two
materials. Also, the cumulative heat during ablation
affects the quality of adjacent PI significantly [17].
Therefore, based on the experimental results, a proper
working parameter of the fluence and the repetition rate,
0.445 J/cm2 and 40 Hz, are selected, respectively. For
10 lm thick PI diaphragm, it needs 80 shots at least.
In practice, 100 shots are performed in order to pene-
trate it thoroughly.
4. PI microactuator fabrication
The new process demonstrates that the shape of the
PI plate of the microactuators can be post-patterned
by excimer laser from PI diaphragm, which was released
by wet etching process. Moreover, the combinations of
thick photoresist lithography, electroplating, bulk
micromachining and excimer laser ablation enhance
the flexibility of the processes. There are some character-
istics and advantages of the processes. Firstly, it demon-
strates that the shape of microactuators can be
post-patterned by excimer laser after the PI diaphragm
was released by wet etching process, by which the pro-
cess avoids the problems of wafer protection and the
residual stress during wafer etching process. Secondly,
the ranges of thickness of the PI diaphragm for microac-
tuators can be larger than those of conventional silicon,
 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381 1373

Fig. 4. PI excimer laser ablation. (a) Fluence versus ablation rate (40 Hz, 50 shots), (b) shot number versus ablation depth (40 Hz,
0.445 J/cm2), (c) repetition rate versus ablation rate (0.445 J/cm2, 50 shots).

polysilicon or nitride thin film. Thirdly, PI can be easily Table 3

micromachined by excimer laser ablation. Finally, with Electroplating parameters for permalloy plating
the alignment of substrate and 4:1 (magnifying lens sys- Permalloy plating condition
tem) mask projection of excimer laser, the microbeams pH value 3.3–3.5
can be ablated precisely. Without anti-stiction bumps Voltage 5
and etching holes, the PI plate can remain its high flat- Temperature 45–50 C
ness so that it can be used for micro-optic applications. Current density 3.5–4 ASD
Stirring type Stirred using N2
4.1. Permalloy electroplating process Deposition rate 0.4–0.5 lm/min

The electroplating bath for Ni/Fe mainly consists of

Ni2+(0.77–0.85 mol/L) and Fe2+(0.11–0.16 mol/L). The Fig. 5(a) shows the Ni/Fe sample array with
permalloy plating condition is listed in Table 3. 13 lm · 13 lm in area for magnetic hysteresis loops
1374 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381

Fig. 5. Experimental results of micro-electroplating permalloy. (a) Sample of Ni/Fe permalloy array for VSM test, (b) electroplating
process, (c) hysteresis loops parallel to permalloy surface by VSM at room temperature.

analysis by vibration sample measurement (VSM). In
order to induce initial magnetic dipole along easy axis,
a strong external magnetic field is applied in parallel to
the direction of the Ni/Fe plate during electroplating
process as illustrated in Fig. 5(b). Its hysteresis loops
parallel to permalloy surface at room temperature is
plotted and shown in Fig. 5(c). A coercivity higher than
3188.4 A/m is not a very low coercivity and is not indic-
ative of a good soft magnetic material so far. In the
future, more efforts will be taken on how to improve
the permalloy electroplating technique to reduce the
coercivity. Next, the Ni/Fe electroplating technique will
be applied to fabricate the permalloy plate on PI dia-
phragm and planar coil process.
 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381 1375

4.2. Fabrication of PI plate have to deposit additional adhesive layer. 15 lm thick of

As illustrated in Fig. 6, firstly, 1600 nm of wet SiO2 is
grown at 1100 C on a double polished (1 0 0)-oriented
silicon wafer. The bulk etching area is patterned in the
back side. SiO2 is served as etching mask and etching
stop film during KOH anisotropic wet etching. Then
PI film is spin-coated on the front side of the silicon
wafer as illustrated in Fig. 6(a). After fully cured in oven
at 370 C, the thickness of PI is controlled at 10 lm.
Subsequently, 100 nm of Ag seed layer is deposited on
PI film by sputtering process. It is noted that the adhe-
sion between PI film and Ag is very well, thus we don’t
photoresist template (AZP 4620) is patterned by UV-
lithography for electroplating Ni/Fe as shown in
Fig. 6(b).
Next, 10 lm in thickness and 800 lm · 800 lm in
area of Ni/Fe permalloy is electroplated in the photore-
sist template. In other case, hard magnet Fe/Pt with per-
pendicular magnetic field is sputtered onto the Ni/Fe.
When Ni/Fe electroplating process is carried out, then
photoresist is removed as shown in Fig. 6(c). Under
the protection of Teflon chuck, the whole wafer is
immersed into 30% KOH solution at 70 C until the
SiO2 etching stop film in the front side appears as

Polyimide

Silicon

O-ring
(a)

Ag Seed Layer Photoresist

(b)

With Hard Magnet Fe/Pt Sputtering Without Hard Magnet Fe/Pt Sputtering
Electroplated Ni/Fe Electroplated Ni/Fe

(c)

Oxide Oxide
Teflon Chuck Teflon Chuck
O-ring O-ring
(d)

Excimer Laser Ablation (e) Excimer Laser Ablation

Fig. 6. Fabrication flow chart of PI diaphragm.

1376 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381

Fig. 7. Schematic flow chart of planar coil with permalloy. (a) Sputtering/electroplating 10-lm thick Cu conductive layer, (b)
photolithography insulation layer and sputtering 0.4-lm thick Cu seed layer, (c) 15 lm thick photolithography process of AZP 4620,
(d) 10-lm thick Cu planar coil electroplating, (e) photoresist removal, (f) photolithography process of 15-lm thick AZP 4620, (g) 10-
lm thick permalloy Ni/Fe eletroplating, (h) photoresist removal seed layer Cu stripping.
 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381 1377

illustrated in Fig. 6(d). The chuck is used to protect the

other side of the wafer during wet etching process. Then
SiO2 etching stop layer is removed.
The final process is to fabricate PI plate and micro-
beams by excimer laser ablation from back side of the
wafer. It is ablated in back side of the wafer in order
to avoid unexpected vibration of diaphragm during
ablation (see Fig. 6(e)). The silver layer is removed using
248 nm excimer laser with pulse energy = 80 mJ, shot
number = 10 shots. This energy level can ablate silver
layer off the polymer without damaging the under layer.
Besides, the contour of excimer laser beam can be con-
Fig. 8. SEM photograph of planar coil.
trolled by programming to avoid damaging the Fe/Pt
structure. The vibration during ablation may change
the laser ablation focus plane of workpiece and affect
the patterned size. Under the 4:1 magnification from Table 4
mask to workpiece, the one-fourth mask pattern is accu- Electroplating parameters for Cu planar coil
rately transferred onto the PI film. The final shape of PI
Electroplating parameters
plate is 10 lm in thickness, 1000 lm in length and
1000 lm in width. pH value of bath 8–9
Applied voltage 5–6 V
4.3. Fabrication of planar coil Electroplating temperature 45–50 C
Current density 3–4 ASD
Filter size 1 lm
For the planar coil, the electroplating bath mainly Anodic material Cu
consists of Cu2P2O7 Æ 3H2O and K4P2O7. Cu (400 nm) Electroplating deposition rate 0.3–0.5 lm/min
is sputtered served as seed layer, and then 10-lm thick
Cu is electroplated above as conductive layer (see
Fig. 7(a)). Then PI as insulation layer is coated, followed
by sputtering 400-nm thick Cu as the second seed layer plate is removed off. Then 15 lm thick of photoresist
(see Fig. 7(b)). Next, 15 lm thick of photoresist template template (AZP 4620) is defined again by UV-lithography
(AZP 4620) is defined by UV-lithography for Cu planar for Ni/Fe electroplating as shown in Fig. 7(f). Subse-
coil electroplating as shown in Fig. 7(c). Then, 10 lm in quently, 10 lm in thickness of Ni/Fe is electroplated in
thickness of Cu is electroplated in the photoresist tem- the photoresist template as illustrated in Fig. 7(g). The
plate as illustrated in Fig. 7(d). When the electroplating permalloy core contains of 200 lm · 200 lm in area
process of Cu planar coil is finished, the photoresist tem- and 10 lm in thickness. Finally, the photoresist template

Fig. 9. Process flow chart of bonding with flip chip and wafer level alignment. (a) Define the bonding pad, (b) wafer level alignment, (c)
bonding process, (d) two wafers were then aligned pad.
1378 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381
and Cu seed layer are stripped off as shown in Fig. 7(h).
The experimental result of planar coil is shown in Fig. 8.
The Cu electroplating parameters are listed in Table 4.
4.4. Bonding process
There are several important processes involved in this
bonding technique. Firstly, the adhesive material was
spin-coated onto the silicon wafer followed by photoli-
thography process to pattern the bonding pad as shown
in Fig. 9(a). After the two silicon wafers were aligned
pad to pad (see Fig. 9(b)), the wafers were placed into
a bonding chamber under a certain bonding force and
temperature. The bonding tool is a commercially avail-
able EV501 (Electronic Visions) bonder with a PC con-
troller and chuck. The bonder allows wafers to contact
and to be annealed between the hot planes.
The adhesive intermediate layer material needs to
have a low glass transition temperature (Tg), and a high
viscosity. Besides, after bonding, excellent adhesion and
low residual stress are required. Thus, SU-8 (a negative
photoresist from Microchem Co.) was selected for the
bonding experiments. The defined bonding pads are as
shown in Fig. 9(c). Two wafers were then aligned pad
to pad and placed into a bonding machine to bond
together. The bonded wafers are shown in Fig. 9(d)
where bonding pads can be seen clearly.
Fig. 10. Photographs of dynamic testing results of the PI microactuator with beam width 100 lm. (a) Schematic of test system,
(b) laser interferometer, (c) 52, (d) 81.
5. Results and discussion
In this study, two different widths of PI beam (i.e.,
b = 100 and 200 lm) are simulated, fabricated and ana-
lyzed. The measurement equipment (laser interferomter)
is shown in Fig. 10(a) and (b). The measurement result
of PI microactuator is shown in Fig. 10(c) and (d). It
shows that PI microactuators can be actuated to 52
and 81, respectively for b = 100 lm.
In this simulation, the magnetization of Ni/Fe as a
function of external field is applied, based on the hyster-
esis loop (see Fig. 5(c)),
B ¼ 0:1478H þ 45; 000  104 ðWb=m2 Þ
0 < H < 33820:4ðA=mÞ ð4Þ
4 2
B ¼ 9500  10 ðWb=m Þ
33820:4 < H < 79577:5ðA=mÞ ð5Þ
With Biot–Savart law, ANSYS software is applied to pre-
dict the deflection angle of the microactuator. With this
method, it is easy to find the optimal parameters to design
a high efficient microactuator. In this study, the beam
widths of 100 and 200 lm are analyzed, respectively. In
this study, a simulation model is created by ANSYS soft-
ware for microactuator. Fig. 11 shows the comparison of
simulated and experimental data. This microactuator has
a huge deflection with less magnetic intensity. For
 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381 1379

Table 5 show the relationship between input power and

defection degree (h). As it can be seen, a deflection angle
of 17.5 only consumes 0.31 W. Compared with the exist-
ing researches [4,8], it is relatively low.
The M-H hysteresis loop analysis by vibration sam-
ple measurement (VSM) of hard magnet Fe/Pt perpen-
dicular to PI surface at room temperature is plotted in
Fig. 14. It reveals that the Fe/Pt shows a good hard
magnet property with a large coercivity value over
795,700 A/m. This Fe/Pt material by sputtering tech-
nique is applied to microactuators to generate a mag-
netic anisotropic field. With this technique, the
deflection angle of microactuator can be enhanced

Fig. 11. Relationship of external magnetic field Hext and 20

deflection angle h, (b = 100 lm).

instance, It takes about 4000 (A/m) to reach 70 deflec- 16

tion in this study. But it takes about 60,000 (A/m) [4]
and 12,500 (A/m) [8] to reach 70, respectively.
Defection degree (θ )

A testing result of the relation between input power 12

and magnetic field up to 4900 A/m has been provided
in Fig. 12. The preliminary experimental results show
a good agreement with simulations. When PI beam 8
width, b is 100 lm, the deflection angles approach to
62 and 81 at Hext = 1210 and 4840 A/m, respectively.
The deflection angle increases with increasing of the
4
Hext. However, the slope of deflection angle curve
decreases gradually when Hext is larger than 2000 A/m.
It is due to some factors, which are not taken into account
0
in the simulation, such as the neglected mass of PI plate
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
and the elastic effect of the permalloy on the PI plate,
Power (Watt)
etc. They all may be responsible for the mentioned-above
phenomena. In the further research, the effect of PI mass Fig. 13. Relationship between input power and defection
and elastic permalloy will be studied more. Fig. 13 and degree (h).

6000

5000

4000
Hext (A/m)

3000

2000

1000

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Power (Watt)

Fig. 12. Relation between input power and magnetic field.

1380 C.T. Pan et al. / Microelectronics Reliability 46 (2006) 1369–1381

Table 5 shown in Fig. 6(c) are used to enhance and concentrate

Testing result the magnetic flux. When current passes the planar coil ,
Input voltage Current Power Defection degree Ni/Fe can induce magnetic force to repulse the PI plate
(V) (A) (W) (h) upward. Once the current is off, the PI plate returns to
1 0.012 0.012 5.0 its initial position just by elastic force of PI. But when
2 0.024 0.048 7.5 Ni/Fe is replaced by Ni/Fe + Fe/Pt, it can repulse and
3 0.037 0.111 10.0 attract the PI plate up and down bi-directionally.
4 0.050 0.200 12.5 In the future, if hard magnet with higher value of
5 0.062 0.310 17.5 magnetic energy product (BH)max was applied to the
microactuators, the deflection angle of microactuator
would further increase significantly. In other words, it
means that larger deflection angle could be expected
with lower Hext.

6. Conclusions

This study presents design and fabrication of microac-

tuators including simulation modeling, hard magnet
sputtering, soft magnet electroplating, planar coil electro-
plating, bulk micromachining and excimer laser ablation
processes. The excimer laser ablation process can avoid
some problems such as the residual stress and etching
selectivity. A large deflection angle of the PI microstruc-
ture has been successfully demonstrated in this study. The
simulated result reveals that a smaller beam width will
cause a larger deflection angle. In this study, beam widths
Fig. 14. Hysteresis loops of hard magnet Fe/Pt at room of b = 100 and 200 lm are simulated, fabricated and ana-
temperature. lyzed. Besides, a thicker planar coil will induce a larger
magnetic force. Since permalloy was designed as core
materials in the planar coil, two photolithography pro-
cesses were involved. To avoid the residual stress and
peeling problems after permalloy electroplating process,
only 10-lm thick planar coil was fabricated and tested.
The preliminary experimental result of deflection angle
shows a good agreement with theoretical simulation.
Besides, with the technique of hard magnet for PI micro-
actuators, the deflection angle can further increase. The
deflection angle can approach to 86 (with hard magnet)
from 81 (without hard magnet) at 4840 A/m.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Center for Micro/

Nano Technology Research, National Cheng Kung Uni-
versity, under projects from the Ministry of Education
and the National Science Council (NSC 93-212—
M-006-006) of Taiwan.

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C.T. Pan was born in Nauto, Taiwan,
Republic of China, in 1969. He received
his engineering degree of master and
doctor in 1993 and 1998, respectively,
from Power Mechanical Engineering
Department of National Tsing Hua
University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. He was a
researcher in the field of laser machining
polymer in the TU Berlin (IWF) in
Germany from 1997 to 1998 and a
researcher of MEMS Division in the
MIRL/ITRI, Hsinchu in Taiwan from 1998 to 2003. He joined
National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic
of China, as an assistant professor in 2003. His current research
interests focus on MEMS, NEMS, and LIGA process.
1381
P.J. Cheng was born in Tainan, Tai-
wan, Republic of China, in 1965. He
received his engineering degree of
master in 1994 from Mechanical
Engineering Department of National
Cheng Kung University in Tainan,
Taiwan. He received his engineering
degree of doctor in 2000 from Power
Mechanical Engineering Department
of National Tsing Hua University in
Hsinchu, Taiwan. He joined Depart-
ment of Electrical Engineering of Nan Jeon Institute of Tech-
nology in Tainan County, Taiwan, Republic of China, as an
assistant professor in 2000. His current research interests focus
on MEMS, NEMS, and LIGA process.
C.K. Yen was born in Kaohsiung, Tai-
wan, Republic of China, in 1980. He
received his engineering degree of mas-
ter in 2003, respectively, from Depart-
ment of Mechanical Engineering of Far
East College in Tainan, Taiwan. He is
studying in the Mechanical Engineering
research institute of Sun Yat-Sen Uni-
versity in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic
of China. His current research interests
focus on MEMS, NEMS, and LIGA
process.
C.C. Hsieh received the B.E. and M.E.
degree from Department of Mechani-
cal and Automation Engineering,
Da-Yeh University, Taiwan, Republic
of China, in 1999, the Ph.D. degree in
Mechanical and Electro-mechanical
Engineering from National Sun Yat-
Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan,
Republic of China, in 2005. He joined
Yung-Ta Institute of Technology &
Commerce, Ping-Tung, Taiwan,
Republic of China, as an assistant professor in 2005. His cur-
rent research interests include MEMS process, applied optical
metrology, and interfacial adhesion of the IC package, etc.