Analysis of electrostatic comb-driven actuators in linear and nonlinear regions

Optimization of Comb-Driven Devices for Mechanical Testing of Polymeric Nanofibers Subjected to Large Deformations

“…Microscale actuators that have been demonstrated in microscale tension experiments to date are surfacemicromachined electrostatic [14]- [17] and electrothermal [18], [19] devices. Thermal actuators have the advantages of providing large actuation forces and being CMOS compatible.…”

“…The temperature increase during device operation rules out the use of thermal actuators for testing polymeric nanofibers, which are very sensitive to temperature variations. On the other hand, electrostatic actuators such as comb drives are expected to generate forces between tens and hundreds of micronewtons and displacements in the range of 10-20 μm [14]. These actuators were employed in microscale mechanical testing platforms before [11], [17], [20] in a rather "brute-force" approach by incorporating very large numbers of comb-drive arrays, in which, although generating large electrostatic forces, the requirements for many suspension tethers and local failures limited their success.…”

“…According to (14), the uncertainty in the lateral tether deflection is required to calculate the uncertainty in the fiber force. Since the force consumed by the tethers, F t , is only a function of the tethers' deflection, the measurement of this force is accurate within the uncertainty Δ λ (F t ) ≈ (dF t /dδ)λ.…”

Computation of capacitance and electrostatic forces for the electrostatically driving actuators considering fringe effects

“…In micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) devices, such as switch (Naito et al 2010), variable capacitor (BakriKassem and Mansour 2004), resonator (Elshurafa et al 2011), micro mirror (Amaya et al 2011;Kim et al 2009), gyroscope (Guo et al 2010), microtweezer (Harouche and Shafai 2005) microscanner (Ataman and Urey 2006), interferometer (Lee et al 2011), attenuator (Yeh et al 2006), energy harvester , force sensor (Rajagopalan and Saif 2011), etc., electrostatic capacitors are mostly used components, which are contained of movable mechanical structures for electrostatic actuation or capacitive sensing (Amaya et al 2009;Elata and Leus 2005;Tilleman 2004;Carlen et al 2005;Sun et al 2002;Eswaran and Malarvizhi 2012;Zhang and Fang 2009). Accurate estimation of electrostatic forces or driven voltages on the MEMS structures is very important for efficient design and performance even subsequent use of the electrostatically driving devices (Jaecklin et al 1992;Chen and Miao 2007;Kang et al 2009;Harness and Syms 2000;Beyeler et al 2009).…”

Design and development of a MEMS-based capacitive bending strain sensor and a biocompatible housing for a telemetric strain monitoring system.

“…Comb drives or systems using interdigitated fingers for variable capacitors, electrostatic actuation and frequency tuning have become integral parts of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices in an emerging technology for RF and wireless communications [63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76]. Due to needs of the telemetry system, interdigitated fingers were investigated for their ability to offer a variable capacitive output.…”