Abstract
The microactuator that makes electrostatic energy/force collaborate with the elastic energy/force was previously proposed. It had the non-linear leaf spring that was designed to work effectively, and the vertical electrodes that moved horizontally (in parallel to the substrate). We propose the new type of microactuator that has the horizontal electrodes moving vertically to generate more powerful electrostatic energy/force. It is necessary to design vertically movable non-linear micro leaf spring in order to make the microactuator highly effective, and it is also needed to develop the fabrication process which uses gray tone lithography to form the non-linear leaf spring. In this paper, the vertically movable non-linear leaf spring was designed and its characteristic was evaluated by using the FEM analysis. The fabrication process of the vertically movable non-linear spring was developed, and its validity was evaluated, too.
