Development of 3-dimension controllable catheter to show the immediate response using both the thermoelectric module and the shape memory alloy (SMA)

Today, the highlighted actuators such a Shape Memory Alloy (hereafter, it is called SMA), will change greatly the next medical device market since their energy integration, lightness and simple structure are superior to those of the conventional electromechanical actuator. Especially, the reason why the SMA actuator system becomes the most important technique for the medical device market of the next generation is that the minimally invasive technique can be applied to the in-vivo lesion due to the superior flexibility of SMA actuator system such a hand. In spite of this advantage, the current SMA actuator is not widespread. The reason is that the non-linear dynamic characteristics of the SMA original hysteresis have not yet been solved. Therefore, to evaluate the thermoelectric characteristics of our developed thermoelectric module for our first basic study, we investigated the temperature variation by stage 1) according to the current increase of the consecutive current and 2) according to the countercurrent of the discontinuous static current.