Abstract
A Ni-Mn-Ga microscanner has been developed as a test platform for an experimentally study of the coupled thermal, magnetic and mechanical performance of ferromagnetic shape memory alloy (FSMA) actuators. The microscanner is designed as a double-beam cantilever of a magnetron sputtered Ni-Mn-Ga thin film. The chemical composition of the cantilever is adjusted to simultaneously induce a ferromagnetic and a martensitic phase transformation upon heating. In the presence of a magnetic field, this system can be actuated in two opposite directions by making use of either magnetic or shape recovery forces. Experimental stationary deflections of the actuator are analyzed by finite element simulations. The shape recovery and magnetic forces are calculated along the trajectory of the actuator allowing the determination of stationary equilibrium positions.
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