A latchable thermally activated phase change actuator and optimization of its response behaviour

Abstract

In this paper we present a latchable, thermally activated phase change (PC) actuator. The actuator can be controlled using a heating resistor and two pressure sources. Thus several hundred actuators can be driven using a highly integrated platform which allows the individual control of several hundred heating resistors. To optimize the response time of the actuators we analyzed the influence of the heating power of the used resistors, the volume of the used phase change material (PCM) and the PCM itself.