Electroplated thick CoNiMnP permanent magnet arrays for micromachined magnetic device applications

Electroplated thick CoNiMnP permanent magnet arrays for micromachined magnetic device applications have been designed, fabricated, and tested. The electroplated arrays contain 5000 magnets of 40 /spl mu/m/spl times/40 /spl mu/m/spl times/50 /spl mu/m in a cubic shape on the silicon membrane of 4.6 mm/spl times/4.6 mm /spl times/20 /spl mu/m, where the magnets have shown a fairly high magnetic vertical coercivity of 600 Oe, a retentivity of 0.2-0.3 Teslas, and a maximum energy density of 10 kJ/m/sup 3/. Using the electroplated magnet array, a proto-type bi-directional vertical microactuator on silicon membrane has been realized with integrated spiral coils. The magnet arrays realized in this work allow a low power consumption, a flexible bi-directional actuation, as well as a favorable CMOS compatibility.