Electrostatic microactuator and design considerations for HDD applications

A flexure-based rotary electrostatic microactuator is described. This microactuator is for application in a high track-density hard disk drive (HDD). It is fabricated using a high aspect-ratio stencil electroplating process. This paper emphasizes the practical system-level issues that affect the device design. The micro-actuator is demonstrated in a 3.5" form-factor HDD. With a servo bandwidth of 5 kHz, a one-track seek can be completed in under 0.2 ms. This batch-fabricated electro-static microactuator provides a low-cost, high-performance solution for achieving very high track-densities. © 1999 IEEE.