Design and performance of NiCr-based micro-heater with lower excitation energy

Abstract

Abstract Low energy and miniaturization are two main development directions for the MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System)-based initiator. The MEMS-based initiators or called fire components were fabricated by the way of that the secondary explosive charges were coated or synthetized with in-situ method onto the NiCr-based micro-heater surface. The firing voltage experiments of the fire component under capacity loading were performed. The fire voltages of the fire components with rectangle micro-heater increase linearly with the increasing of micro-heater’s width, and decrease with the increasing of micro-heater’s thickness. The fire voltages of the fire components with Pyrex7740 substrate cut down to 50%, compared to the fire component with silicon substrate. The fire component with lower explosive density contributes to reduce the fire voltage. The micro-heater with parallel connection structure or called parallel micro-heaters cannot have lower fire voltage than the single micro-heater, but have more reliability to initiate the secondary explosive.