Large-Displacement Micro Pneumatic Actuators Based on Corrugated Parylene Film

This paper presents a flexible Parylene-based micro pneumatic actuator featuring a large displacement, which suggests potential applications in micro robotic activation and deformable implanted transducers. Due to the inelastic mechanical property of Parylene, corrugated Parylene film was fabricated to introduce stretchable areas, which grants the proposed large displacement and designable deformation. The fabrication process involves sacrificial photoresist molds and titanium adhesion promoting layer, which avoid silicon etching or Parylene bonding process, for better compatibility with other fabrication processes and possible integrated design. An over 400 μm displacement of an actuator of 500 μm in radius and 20 μm in thickness at an inflating pressure of 200 kPa was demonstrated. A finite element model (FEM) was also constructed and the simulation tallies well with the experiment.