**Author details**

*Advanced Functional Materials*

measured to be 5–15 mW.

**4. Conclusion**

actuators.

**Acknowledgements**

guidance and support.

**Conflict of interest**

No conflict of interests.

**Notes/Thanks/Other declarations**

References section. Assign the appropriate heading.

**Figure 4** shows the measured deflection of the actuator using a 1 V pulsed current with 50% duty cycle at 3 kHz. For these devices the total power drawn was

In conclusion, we were able to demonstrate novel applications of the SMA MEMS actuator including both low power laser and low power and fast electrical joule heating. In other words, the SMA can be actuated by absorbing laser energy in the form of heat, or through pulsed electrical current. This was enabled by the development of deposition and characterizations of nanoscale thickness NiTi thin films. NiTi thin films with reversible changes in recovery stress were mated with other residual stressed thin films to enable reversible thermal actuation at MEMS scale. By incorporating nanoscale thin film SMA MEMS with good heat sinking design, we could achieve reversible actuations up to 3 kHz which is significantly greater than many previous reports for SMA

Special thanks to Mr. Brian Iassacson for assistance with processing SMA MEMS device wafers in the ARL cleanroom. Thanks also to Dr. Christopher Morris and Gabriel Smith of ARL, and Dr. Hugh Bruck of University of Maryland for their

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**20**

Cory R. Knick US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), US Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, Ft. Belvoir, VA, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: cory.r.knick.civ@mail.mil

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
