In-plane linear displacement bistable microrelay

Abstract

This paper investigates the Linear Displacement Bistable Mechanism (LDBM) for use in microrelays. The LDBM, thermal actuators, and contacts are integrated to demonstrate a relay design. The performance of the relay is characterized using relay performance metrics, including size (1.92 mm 2), contact force (23.4 µN), switching time (340 µs), breakdown voltage (> 475 V), and isolation (> 235 V). The actuation voltage and current are 11 V and 85 mA, respectively. AC characteristics, including contact-to-contact crosstalk and AC isolation are also measured. The testing results demonstrate that it is feasible to use the LDBM as a microrelay and that it has potential for use in future applications.

Analytical Study of the Snap-Through and Bistability of Beams With Arbitrarily Initial Shape

“…Bistable beams exhibit additional advantages, such as their simplicity, passive holding, low actuation energy, small footprint, large stroke with small restoring forces, and negative stiffness zone. These advantages make bistable beams suitable for an increasing number of applications at different scales, such as space applications [1], biomedical [2], energy harvesting [3,4], resonators [5], actuators [6] accelerometers [7], shock sensors [8], gas sensors [9], pressure sensors [10], flow sensors [11], grippers [12], mechanisms with large displacement and small actuation stroke [13], switches [14], relays [15], memory devices [16], logics [17], lamina emergent frustrum [18], statically-balanced mechanisms [19], soft robotics [20], constant force mechanisms [21,22], bistable positioning [23][24][25][26], and multistable devices [27][28][29][30][31][32].…”

Dynamic analysis of a snap-action micromechanism

“…Energy is only needed to switch between states, but no energy is needed to keep devices in equilibrium state. Different examples of microbistable systems have been presented [4], [5] and recently these properties have been used to built several micro-devices such as memory cells [6], microswitches [7], micro relays [8], microvalves [9] and fiber optic switches [10]. All these mechanisms were actuated statically, using thermal or electrostatic actuators.…”

Dynamic and Quasi-Static Simulation of a Novel Compliant MEMS Force Amplifier by Matlab/Simulink

“…Besides, compliant micro mechanisms could be activated by mechanically (Han et al, 2007;Krishnan & Ananthasuresh, 2008), electro statically (Français et al, 2005;Millet et al, 2004), thermally (Lai et al, 2004;Terre & Shkel, 2004) or electrical (Gomm et al, 2002;Huang & Lan, 2006) induced forces.…”