MIPS Project Detail:
Company
Company Description:
Syntonics innovates and manufactures specialty RF communications equipment and accessories, especially RF-over-fiber products and innovative antennas, for military, civil and industrial markets.
The company’s PARCA (Pixel-Addressable Reconfigurable Conformal Antenna) is a phased array technology that operates under software control to be pointing-agile, frequency-agile, polarization-agile, lowprofile, and affordable. The PARCA concept uses a dense array of conductive pixels that can be turned ‘on’ or ‘off’ to rapidly (one millisecond) reconfigure a patch array’s beam pointing direction, operating frequency, aperture gain, and beam polarization.
MIPS Project
MEMS Components for PARCA Software-Defined Antenna
Project #
5009
|
MIPS Round
50
|
Starting Date:
Aug 2012
MIPS Project Challenge:
The goal of this MIPS project was to develop a microfabrication process capable of manufacturing an array of PARCA pixels and microactuators.
Project Scope:
Through this MIPS project, researchers were slated to develop a novel, silicon MEMS manufacturing process capable of achieving the monolithic fabrication of integrated PARCA pixel arrays and low-power microactuators using techniques that are scalable to low-cost and high-volume mass production.
Results:
A new type of out-of-plane electrostatic microactuator delivering exceptionally high vertical displacements was developed. The performance of various actuator designs was characterized and shown to be in good agreement with analytical predictions. Fabricated microstage actuators achieving deflections up to 60 percent of their in-plane dimensions were realized, and reliable actuation over nearly 10 million cycles was demonstrated.
At the same time, a microfabrication process was developed for manufacturing low-mass antenna pixels comprising two conductive layers on either side of a thick polymer matrix. Individual pixels were successfully fabricated, and a process supporting integration of the pixels with zipper microactuators was conceived.
The following paper was submitted for publication as a result of this MIPS project: J. Felder, E. Lee, D.L. DeVoe, “Extreme vertical displacement electrostatic zipper microstage actuators,” submitted to J. MEMS, 2013.
Principal Investigator:
Don
DeVoe
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Project Manager:
Steven
Gemeny
Sr. Principal Engineer
Technologies:
Communications
