Printed Circuit Board Coil Based Electromagnetic Actuator Design For Micro/Milliscale Manipulation

Trends in nano and micro technologies have directed researchers' concern towards designing small-scale functional systems, i.e., MEMS, NEMS, etc. This study represents a design and implementation scheme for a class of small-scale actuators. Electromagnetic actuators currently used have disadvantages in small-scale applications since they cannot be produced in the desired sizes and compactness due to complex components. Using printed circuit board (PCB) based design strategies, scalable actuators can be produced in a smaller form factor and at a lower cost. The study aims to produce planar PCB actuators that are relatively simple, consisting of fewer discrete parts, producible in a single plant, and are in reduced-size dimension. Another advantage of the PCB-based design is that the control and power electronics can be embedded in the actuator. With these goals, the design steps in the project can be listed as follows: First, designing a coil that consists of copper paths on the PCB that can meet the expectations (homogeneous magnetic field, high magnetic force/current ratio), then building a planar actuator using these coil structures. As the final step, designing the control structure and circuitry suitable for the actuator and its integration into the system. The proposed systesm test results shows that, the PCB coil actuator could apply a force of up to 10 mN to the 1.55 mm microrobot and position it with an uncertainty of 120 μm.