Dynamic behavior of microstructures

Abstract

Continued demand for flexible and sophisticated, yet lightweight and low power as well as small, systems is being satisfied by advances in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). These advances require use of computational modeling and simulation accompanied by physical measurements. Successful combination of computer aided design (CAD) and multiphysics simulation tools with the state-of-the-art (SOTA) measurement methodology will contribute to reduction of high prototyping costs, long product development cycles, and time-to-market pressures while developing MEMS for a multitude of increasingly diversified applications. In one approach a unique, fully integrated, software environment for multiscale, multiphysics, high fidelity modeling of MEMS is combined with the SOTA optoelectronic laser interferometric microscope (OELIM) methodology for measurements. The OELIM methodology allows remote, noninvasive, full-field-of-view (FFV) measurements of displacements/deformations and vibrations with high spatial resolution, nanometer accuracy, and in near real-time. In this paper, an approach -employing both, the modeling environment (including an analytical process used to quantitatively show the influence that various parameters defining a microstructure, e.g., RF MEMS, a microswitch, or a sensor, may have on its dynamics; using this process dynamic characteristics of a device/sensor can be optimized by constraining its nominal dimensions and finding the optimum set of uncertainties/tolerances in these dimensions) and the OELIM methodology -is described and its applications are illustrated with representative examples. The examples reveal viability of the approach, combining measurements and modeling (i.e., M&M), for the development of MEMS. The representative results demonstrate capacity of the M&M approach to quantitative determination of the effects of dynamic operational loads on performance of selected microstructures of current interest.