This work describes the study of a thermal actuator and modifications to the materials employed in order to decrease power consumption and implementation costs. For this study, we worked on improving the thermal actuator described in the work of T. Ebefors [1]. The criteria for choosing the new materials were lower power consumption, commercial availability, and ease processing. The idea behind the low power optimization is to find a material to improve thermal expansion at lower temperatures. For low cost optimization, the goal was to use an alternative to silicon-based approaches. Silicon fabrication facility was increase prototyping costs. The use of alternative materials will, therefore, make possible the implementations of applications and class prototypes at low cost for teaching purposes.
