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Record W4415490089 · doi:10.1038/s41378-025-00906-6

Angled electrode comb drives for enhanced actuator in silicon photonic applications

2025· article· en· W4415490089 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
fundA Canadian funder is recorded on the work.

Bibliographic record

VenueMicrosystems & Nanoengineering · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicPhotonic and Optical Devices
Canadian institutionsConcordia University
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaCMC Microsystems
KeywordsActuatorFootprintComb driveFlexibility (engineering)Microelectromechanical systemsBeam steeringPhotonicsFabrication

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of electrostatic comb drives, specifically focusing on angled finger configurations to optimize performance for high-demand silicon photonic devices. The study contributes to the advancement of optical microsystems, particularly for beam steering configurations, by simultaneously considering three key figures of merit: traveling range (or displacement), force, and footprint, which are essential for achieving high force intensity and large travel ranges. We investigate critical design parameters such as the number of fingers per arm, their dimensions, and arm dimensions to understand their influence on actuator performance. The research also adheres to design rules for commercially available foundries, ensuring that the proposed designs are manufacturable and suitable for practical implementation. Our findings highlight that angled fingers significantly enhance force intensity and travel range, providing operational flexibility essential for applications requiring a compact footprint alongside high-force capabilities. Through detailed simulations and experimental validations, we demonstrate how specific adjustments in comb drive configuration, like finger geometry and comb arrangement, effectively maintain extensive travel ranges while improving force intensity. We achieved a force intensity of over 200 mN/m² through optimized comb configurations and demonstrated how changes in configuration, even with the same finger and arm dimensions, significantly affect the force intensity. Furthermore, we introduce correction functions to compensate for common fabrication discrepancies, such as over-etching, enhancing the precision of manufacturing processes and ensuring alignment with design specifications. This work establishes a robust framework for developing high-performance MEMS actuators that balance the need for a compact footprint with stringent force and travel range requirements in beam steering and other advanced optical applications.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.191
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.003
GPT teacher head0.213
Teacher spread0.210 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it