Electromagnetic actuators are an important actuation tool to achieve positioning precision on the nanometer scale. In this realm Lorentz actuators are the mostly used, due to their linear dependence between actuation force and applied current. The ever growing demand to increase the force efficiency of the actuator leads towards more detailed investigations of reluctance actuation. Overall, we find that a Lorentz actuator is limited by dissipation, while a reluctance actuator is limited by magnetic saturation. Read more
