Microactuator

A microactuator is a microscopic servomechanism that supplies and transmits a measured amount of energy for the operation of another mechanism or system. As a general actuator, following standards have to be met:

Large travel
High precision
Fast switching
Low power consumption
Power free force sustainability

For microactuator, there are two in addition

Microstructurability
Integrability

Principle of microactuators

The basic principle can be described as the expression for mechanical work
$W={\overrightarrow {F}}\cdot \Delta {\overrightarrow {r}}$
since an actuator is to manipulate positions and therefore force is needed. For different kind of microactuators, different physical principles are applied.